Back in January of last year, the Unites States Special Operations Command released a requirement for soft body armor in support of the Special Operations Forces Personal Equipment Advanced Requirements (SPEAR) program.
For those of you who are fixated on price being the government’s number one factor for selection of a solution, this isn’t always the case. For this solicitation, they were intent on the best value with appropriate consideration given to the major factors listed in descending order of importance: Technical/Management, Past Performance, and Price. Technical/Management is significantly more important than Past Performance, which is significantly more important than Price.
Specifically, the Technical/Management Factor (Factor 1) is significantly more important than the Past Performance Factor (Factor 2), which is significantly more important than the Price Factor (Factor 3). With regard to Factor 1, Subfactor 1 is significantly more important than Subfactor 2 which is significantly more important than Subfactor 3 which is significantly more important than Subfactor 4:
Factor 1 –TECHNICAL / MANAGEMENT
Subfactor 1: Weight?Subfactor 2: Soft Armor Limited User Evaluation?Subfactor 3: Technical Approach and Independent Ballistic Test Data
Subfactor 4: Delivery Schedule and Production Capacity/Capability
Factor 2 – PAST PERFORMANCE
Factor 3 – PRICE
They cancelled this initial solicitation at the end of April of this year because none of the offerors could meet the spec, which remains classified.
The solicitation was re-released in July of this year and an award was announced on September 20th to Hardwire, LLC of Pocomoke City MD. The award is a five-year, IDIQ, Firm Fixed Price contract for a minimum of $100,000.00 and a ceiling of $8,000,000.00.
