GSA won’t award remaining agile BPA pools

The General Services Administration and its 18F digital services team won’t award contracts under the two remaining pools of its agile delivery services blanket purchase agreement.

GSA sent a letter to firms who bid on pools one and two — for design and development services, respectively — to inform them of its intent not to award the BPA in those areas.

The letter, signed by GSA senior contracting officer Hassan Harris, explains that more small businesses bid for and were awarded contracts under pool three of the BPA than expected, resulting in less need for the other pools. 

“A belief existed in connection with acquisition planning that the majority of small businesses would not be as competitive for Pool Three Full Stack (Design and Development), accordingly Pool One (Design) and Pool Two (Development) were set-aside solely for small businesses,” the letter says. “However, this was not the case as the Government received eighty nine (89) quotes spanning across the entire business size spectrum (large business, small business, and socioeconomic subsets of small business) for Pool Three (Design and Development) alone.”

GSA intended to award 10 spots on pool three full stack services, but in August 2015, it awarded spots to 17 firms. Eleven of those were small businesses, and three of those were companies that submitted for one of the other two pools. 

[Read more: GSA, 18F award first series of agile software contracts]

“Therefore the Government’s requirements for both design and development services through the Agile Delivery Services BPAs are being fully met through the BPAs issued against Pool Three Full Stack, specifically by companies that represent both large and small businesses,” Harris wrote. 

There will be other opportunities for offerors who didn’t make the cut to join pool three in the future, if any current awardees cancel or are off-ramped, the letter says.