About the [last] Antarctic contract rebid...
Above...construction of the landmark Chalet in McMurdo in 1969-1970. This distinctive prefabricated structure, the main NSF office facility in McMurdo, was the first major building project completed by a prime NSF support contractor, which at the time was Holmes and Narver, Inc. (H&N). Except for site preparation by the Navy the previous year, it was successfully completed in the one summer season. (Left photo by RM3 Ken "Hogman" Trettin, WO McMurdo DF-70; right photo: a U. S. Navy photo from the Antarctic Journal, July/August 1970).
Note: The contract award announcement to Lockheed Martin was made on 23 December 2011. The contractor and employment information on this page is now historical. ..for current job information go to the jobs page here. Also, the history of the U.S. Antarctic Program's contracting activity has been moved to a separate page. Interest was stirred up in 2007, but on 30 April 2008 the first official announcement was made on what was then the FedBizOpps site: (now SAM.gov). This announcement included the Sources Sought Synopsis" which summarized the planned scope of the proposed solicitation and provided (as an attachment) a general scope of work, which they emphasized was actually a "Statement of Objectives." This cover letter was also sent out to interested parties. Around this time,
In June and July, additional information was provided, including draft sections of the proposed RFP, which described the contract performance period which was to begin with a transition period from 1 October 2009 to 31 March 2010 (assuming a new contractor) and continuing through up to 14 austral winter seasons to 30 September 2023, with of course review periods after an initial 4-1/2 year award (as well as an assumed transition period between October 2023 and March 2024 for the then-incumbent contractor if they were not the successful bidder for the next contract). There was also an invitation to a presolicitation conference at the NSF headquarters on 26-28 August 2008. Here is the conference agenda--it mostly included a number of presentations about the various aspects of the U.S. Antarctic Program...which are quite interesting, still mostly applicable, and still mostly available online: Day One, 26 August:
The conference was attended by representatives of 41 different organizations, some of which were potential subcontractors and media. The attendees were invited to submit a number of questions, and the answers to most of these were distributed to all of the attendees and publicly posted: What happened next--on 15 September 2008, NSF announced the plan and schedule for the site visit for the prospective bidders. I was at Pole when this was announced and actually hoped to meet up with a friend or two who were part of bidding teams, but that didn't work out. More information about the official GSA bid solicitation that went live on 30 April 2008: the web site contains all of the detailed official announcements, presolicitation conference presentations, and the RFP itself, along with amendments and links to pages with more information and lists of interested participants. As things progressed, there were no announcements as to the actual lists of serious bidders, participants in the site visits (which were the week of 17 November 2008), the joint venture posturing, or similar information. An archive of the NSF information site page (which was first issued in 2008) is located here; it includes a detailed schedule of the original bid program. Most links on this page are no longer available...a few of them can be found on the solicitation page. Some of the backup proposal data was due in January 2009, the final due date for submitting those pallet loads of bids and supporting information was 23 February 2009. Ever since then, one would think that the real serious arm twisting, negotiating, and "best and final" offering would have continuing behind closed doors. Not. At least not yet. [As of 2 February 2012, the FBO and NSF sites had not been updated to reflect the contract award.] On 28 August 2009, NSF started notifying the seven bidding teams that everything was off. There would be a revised schedule and solicitation amendment issued by the end of September...for what basically is a year's postponement. RPSC is being asked to provide a 1-year extension. The final turnover to the new contractor will not be until 1 April 2011. Behind-the-scenes discussions obviously continued, but it would be several months before the official NSF or FBO sites would be updated. Not quite...the FBO page was revised on 10 September 2009 to announce an update, but the update was missing. A 19 August 2009 Engineering News-Record article basically outlines that mum was the word in Arlington, although more than one of the bidders has opted to buy billboard space near the NSF headquarters. An earlier 4 June 2009 Washington Technology news article tells us that the whole thing could be worth over $1.5 billion if the options for all of the 13 years are exercised. Rick Yuse, president of Raytheon Technical Services (parent company of RPSC) stated that his company had partnered with AECOM this time--AECOM is of course the successor company to Holmes and Narver, Inc., the 1970's contractor as well as the lead partner in the Antarctic Support Associates (ASA) joint venture that was "Denver" in the 1990's. This joint venture had launched itself as TransPolar LLC; with a short FAQ page from president Sam Feola directed primarily to current RPSC employees (their web presence has since disappeared). Another bidding joint venture consists of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and EG&G--this team called itself Antarctic Research Support (ARS) (their web presence has also disappeared for reasons that are obvious). EG&G was the other original ASA joint venture partner. A total of seven bidding teams submitted proposals before the original February 2009 deadlines--the other bidders were ITT (the 1980's support contractor), KBR, a Fluor/Day & Zimmerman joint venture, CH2M Hill, and Lockheed Martin. Some of the bid teams had been collecting resumes since 2009, either on their own web sites or job recruiting web sites. One of the issues that continued to confound both the bidding teams and the NSF proposal evaluators is the new requirement that a significant amount of the work must be subcontracted--perhaps nearly 25%--just a bit more than the current operation (although not THAT much more if you include the other NSF contracts such as the Navy SPAWAR contracts for McMurdo air traffic control and weather). Finally in December 2009 the FBO site was updated with stale news of "Amendment 6" which had been issued in October requiring the bidders to restate their financial information in a different format by 24 November. The amendment also included new Q&A's outlining some of the additional forthcoming proposal review steps. Denver reporter Jonathan Shikes of Westword covered the contract award delay in this 30 December 2009 blog. And finally on 5 January 2010 NSF revised its main solicitation page (archive) to include a new schedule...further competitive range determination in February and March 2010, evaluation and "best and final" negotiations between March and June, and contract award by the end of the 2010 boreal summer. Since then, the current RPSC contract was finally officially extended for a year on 12 March 2010, less than a month before it was due to expire on 1 April. The extension had originally been proposed on 7 October 2009. Here is the 5 April 2010 Raytheon press release about the extension. But other than that...nothing. There were several hints and announcements that the field would be narrowed by 1 April...or in May...but all been silent and the official pages were not updated for many months. On 20 August 2010...at last...an announcement of the "downselect" or the "best and final" or whatever, although cannot find that announcement in the public bid documents.. The three finalists are CH2MHILL, Lockheed Martin, and KBR. And of course some of us expected an announcement of the award in another month or two per the then-current schedule. But no. On 20 September, NSF announced they were extending things ANOTHER year, with this announcement, which was actually the announcement of the planned extension of RPSC's contract through March 2012. On 26 October, what was then the FedBizOpps site posted a new Amendment 7 which made a number of data requirement changes, changed the bid submission deadline to 6 December 2010 per this document, and provided a statement of work for the contract transition period. Later as part of Amendment 8 (16 November 2010) came another round of Q&A's, as well as more technical updates. And on 19 November this deadline was pushed back again to 20 December 2010 per Amendment 9. The next amendment, Amendment 10, was issued on 1 December 2010; it contained additional Q&A. Per a more recent schedule, NSF schedule (archived site), the award was to be in September 2011. As for the one-year extension...with all of the continuing Federal budget negotiations...as expected, it took awhile for the 1-year RPSC contract extension to be finalized. This didn't officially happen until 31 March 2011, and the announcement wasn't issued until 1 April (!). Here's the official SAM.gov (formerly fbo.gov) announcement page, a hard copy of the extension justification, the 8 April Raytheon press release, and a bit of commentary from the 12 April Westword (Denver) Off Limits column (scroll down to the second half of the column). June 2011...the number crunching continues. Amendment 11 was issued on 20 May--it requested some significant recalculations and resubmittals. Amendment 12, issued on 3 June, included Q&A's about Amendment 11...postponed the resubmittal date to 14 June...and clarified that only the 3 best-and-final bidders were expected to resubmit. Otherwise, rumors continued to fly, but I wasn't privy to them. Late July 2011...OPP director Karl Erb outlined the contract award status at the 28-29 July National Science Board meeting. There would be final discussions with the proposers in mid to late August...followed by final proposal revisions to be received in mid to late September. The goal was to announce the award no later than mid November. And a few days later, RPSC put up a "transition" page (no longer available) on the Raytheon website, as a source for news, updates, and FAQs about the award and transition process. September/October 2011...there were FOUR contract amendments posted in September on the GSA contract web site...and two more in mid-October. Mostly they provided an opportunity for the number crunchers with KBR, CH2M Hill, and Lockheed Martin to break out their #2 pencils and spreadsheets one more time, for another final submission due 30 September. One of the data items in the amendments (they are now up to amendment #18!) was a list, updated in July 2011 and part of Amendment 13, of USAP subcontracts and leases that are part of the contract. Everything from the Xerox machines and those Wells Fargo ATMs in Building 155...to the N B Palmer...to...the lease on the RPSC building in Centennial. Which was scheduled to expire on 30 April 2012...and an extension had not been requested or negotiated. Also...the schedule on the NSF contract site was adjusted on 2 September to indicate that the evaluations/negotiations would run to 30 September and the contract award would be in November. And the RPSC "Transition" page and FAQ were updated several times to reflect the mid-November award schedule. Amendments 14, 15, and 16 were administrative and mostly updated the required submittal details about proposed subcontractors. The last two amendments, Amendment 17 and Amendment 18, extended the final proposal submission date to 25 October 2011. But...a mid-November award didn't happen. The rumor around at the time (which was all it was) was that the award would be announced on 1 December. Well, that didn't happen either. Around that time, the Blue Ribbon panel led by Norm Augustine was in McMurdo...on Sunday 4 December they held an open discussion. Before the main presentation, Dr. Karl Erb said that that an announcement about the contract rebid would be made within the next two weeks...which was close to the truth.  On Thursday 22 December 2011 at 1600 US Eastern time (1000 Friday at Pole) the initial announcement was made to the USAP community that the contract had been awarded to the Lockheed Martin Corporation. A few hours later on the same day, Sam Feola sent out the official announcement. The official public press releases didn't happen until after the Christmas holiday on 28 December 2011...here's the Lockheed Martin press release, and the NSF announcement. And Science/AAAS issued this news article on the 29th. Due to the two-year delay from the original contract award schedule, the performance terms were also adjusted by two years, from the original 1 October 2009-31 March 2010 transition period plus 14 austral winter periods to 30 September 2023, to 22 December 2011-31 March 2025. With only about 2 months before the scheduled closing of McMurdo, and 3 months before the official transition date of 1 April, things started happening frantically. Lockheed Martin established a project website(which was since revised frequently before being taken down). They held an information session with RPSC personnel in Denver on 5 January (information from the RPSC transition page). And the jobs postings began. Not only by Lockheed...but also by many of their subcontractors. Terms of the new contract required even more subcontractor participation than that in the RPSC contract...and the subcontracting picture was made even more complicated by the fact that Lockheed Martin's original bid had included participation by their wholly owned subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE)...but that entity had been sold to private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg, LLC in April 2011. Celia Lang, the project director for what Lockheed Martin calls the ASC (Antarctic Support Contract) (yes, more new acronyms) put up a welcome message on the web site in early January; the page included this listing of Lockheed Martin and subcontractor functions:
(Note that the above list reflects the contractors as of the original December 2011 award. The prime ASC contract was transferred by Lockheed-Martin to Leidos in August 2016; for the current list of active contractors/subcontractors, refer to my Antarctic Jobs page.) Celia Lang and other Lockheed team members visited McMurdo and Pole in late January as part of the transition process. The first priority for hiring was arranging for transition of the winterover contracts. She was back in Denver to work with folks in the RPSC office the first week in February. At the time various Lockheed Martin and subcontractor web sites were listing many jobs, summer and winter, in Antarctica, Denver, and elsewhere. For a time it was a fluid fast-changing situation on the web, as it must have been in the office. One issue was the fact that portions of the contract structure were several years old and did not reflect current "projects"--as such, many "project" oriented RPSC jobs were not part of the new contract. Also, some of the RPSC job functions were to be relocated (such as some of the science planning activities, which will be relocated to the DC area near NSF), totally assigned to subcontractor locations elsewhere, assumed by existing Lockheed Martin organizational functions, or eliminated for other reasons. So as the dust settled, some incumbent RPSC folks, including long-time employees, found themselves with a need to relocate...or without a job altogether. By the way...yes, there was a protest. CH2M Hill was officially debriefed by NSF on 5 January and filed a protest the next day. This 6 January 2012 Engineering News-Record story is still available behind a metered paywall, along with this this Washington Technology article. "CH2M HILL Antarctic Support, Inc. is disappointed with result of the NSF's selection process for the Antarctic Support Contract," the company said in a statement. Lockheed-Martin declined to comment on the protest. And NSF contracting officer Bart Bridwell noted, "I'm afraid Federal acquisition isn't for the faint of heart." According to the official court docket, a decision was due by 18 April. By February 2012, Lockheed Martin had consolidated the job seeker information onto a Facebook page (you do not need to belong or sign up for Facebook to see it). The "Jobs" tab links to a variety of positions with both Lockheed and the subcontractors...the "Links" tab has differently ordered jobs with Lockheed and some of the subcontractors. Since then, the listing of hundreds of jobs has dwindled to less than a couple of dozen. As of late April it was not clear whether the positions for the 2012-13 summer/winter would be selected from previously received applications or whether they would be readvertised. It appears that the hiring for at least some of the subcontractor positions were being handled by their representatives in the Centennial office, and as of April some people had already been hired for the 2012-13 ice season.
Post-transition updates (through 2021!): The CH2M Hill protest was denied on 18 April 2012, originally reported summarily without comment by the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). On 9 May, the decision details were announced. In summary, the protest involved 3 major issues--the technical rating given to CH2M Hill's vs Lockheed Martin's proposal (one significant item here was the risk assigned to CH2M Hill's plan to relocate the data center), the fact that after the bid closing NSF had "discussions" with Lockheed which may have been inappropriate, and the fact that the Lockheed proposal as valued was priced slightly higher than the CH2M Hill proposal. A summary of the decision is contained in this 8 May Washington Technology news article, and more details are provided by the redacted version of the official decision released on the GAO site. Also, a 31 May 2012 MSN NZ Money article (which is no longer available) described the NZ$100 million role of PAE NZ as the subcontractor providing the New Zealand support for the contract...apparently only in New Zealand, as no mention was made about hiring Kiwis for work on the ice, as had been done in the past. Jump to 16 August 2016...Leidos takes over the Antarctic Support Contract (ASC) from Lockheed-Martin...this had nothing to do with the Antarctic contract itself, but it was due to a "Reverse Morris Trust" arrangement--a way for L-M to recover cash (potentially $8 billion) to pay for their acquisition of Sikorsky, and to offset their loss of the long range bomber program to Grumman by selling their Information Systems & Global Systems (IS&GS) division (which included the Antarctic contract) to Leidos. I've put all of the details here. That transition seems to have gone well (at left, my August 2017 photo of the ASC/Leidos sign). At some point in 2018, the Bellingham, Washington company Best Recycling, was acquired by Gana-A'Yoo Services Corporation (the ASC contractor providing camp and food services support) and transitioned to Six Mile, LLC. I don't have the dates or details, but this winter 2019 Gana-A'Yoo PDF newsletter (see the bottom of page 3) provides a bit of detail. The most recent news, in the fall of 2021, is that ASC subcontractor PAE is to be acquired by Amentum, an AECOM spinoff. Here are 25 October press releases from Amentum" and from PAE (archived)about the deal. There's not a lot of detail, in part because Amentum, unlike PAE, is privately held...and it is a February 2020 spinoff of AECOM's government businesses...AECOM of course has in the past incorporated contractors previously involved in Antarctic support contracts--Holmes & Narver and EG&G per this Amentum corporate lineage diagram that also names some other familiar former contracting companies. The acquisition is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2022...of course I have no idea of how this might affect the current ASC operations. Although I've heard speculation that PAE might have considered bidding on the next upcoming ASC prime contract...perhaps Amentum may do so. That brings to mind the NEXT ASC contract rebid...preliminary stuff has already happened, as of mid October 2023 there are still only hints. | ||
