As much as a quarter-billion dollars in contracts could be awarded over the next five years to provide worldwide “conventional weapons destruction” (CWD) services on behalf of the U.S. State Department.
In a document released today (May 9) titled “Questions and Answers for the [CWD] Solicitation, the department confirmed that the maximum ceiling for the five-year program indeed was set at $250 million. Since State earlier had designated the endeavor as a “100% small-business set aside,” a perplexed but unidentified contractor had submitted the question, “This seems to be a very big contract for a Small Business. Is this ceiling correct?” State responded in the affirmative, while pointing out, however, that “annual spending on the current contract has ranged from $30 million-$40 million per year.”
A previous, $160 million award had gone to contracting behemoth DynCorp International. In December 2010 DynCorp had received an $8 million sole-source contract-extension to continue destroying weapons and stockpiles in Laos, Montenegro, and Albania that State claimed may “otherwise fall into use by terrorists, criminals, or similar organizations,” according to a Justification for Approval of Other Than Full and Open Competition (J&A) document.
Separately, late last year RONCO Consulting Corporation received a $3 million extension to a previously awarded $185 million contract to perform CWD services in Iraq and Peru. Similarly, State awarded to ArmorGroup North America a $3 million extension to a previously awarded $78 million contract to perform CWD services in the same nations where DynCorp was conducting such operations: Laos, Montenegro, and Albania.
It should be noted that ArmorGroup lost an even larger contract to provide security services to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight helped expose lewd and irresponsible behavior by contractor personnel.
The latest contracting action—which would open up the DynCorp, RONCO, and ArmorGroup projects to competitive bidding—has extended the due date for proposals to May 18.
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