Four Washington area companies and three other firms have been awarded contracts to help determine whether the Navy should outsource some jobs to the private sector or continue to perform them internally.
BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, BAE Systems North America of Rockville, Omnitec Solutions Inc. of Bethesda and Warden Associates Inc. of Springfield won the contracts for the Navy's strategic sourcing program, as did Grant Thornton of Chicago, Unity Consultants Inc. of Chesapeake and E.L. Hamm and Associates Inc. of Virginia Beach. The companies will compete with each other for work under the program.
The companies are to support Navy and Marine Corps preliminary planning under the A-76 program, said Laurie Cordell, a contracting officer with the Navy's Strategic Sourcing Acquisition Center of Excellence. Strategic sourcing refers to sourcing with an eye toward finding the most efficient means of operating. And A-76 is an Office of Management and Budget document that sets forth how government agencies decide whether to outsource functions. The process pits government workers against contractors to determine who can best perform a particular government task, such as managing a military depot or providing support to an agency's computer users.
The Navy needs services such as preliminary planning support for competitive sourcing studies; preparing performance-based and traditional statements of work; and assisting with market research that identifies potential contractors and compares commercial industry standards against current government standards.
Each of the contracts has a ceiling of $60 million over a five-year period, Cordell said.
The companies "will be involved with planning how to group the work functions and how to best align a business unit for accomplishing the work that needs to be done under the resulting contract, whether with the government or with the private sector," Cordell said.
However, the companies will not help the Navy put the contract proposals together because that would pose a conflict of interest, she said.
The contractors also will train Navy and Marine Corps personnel involved in strategic sourcing and provide technical and administrative support for various other naval strategic sourcing initiatives, such as privatization, divestiture and military conversions.
Savings from the program will allow the Navy to shift resources to military operations, rather than support functions, Navy officials said.
BearingPoint has provided strategic sourcing assistance to the Navy in the past as well as to the Army, FBI and Forest Service, said Paul Gallagher, managing director with BearingPoint's Public Services practice and the company's project leader.
"We have delivered good support to our individual customers both in the Navy and Marine Corps in terms of studies that delivered savings," he said.
William Welsh is a senior writer with Washington Technology. For more details on this and other technology contracts, go to www.washingtontechnology.com.
