You may have been looking up at the sky recently to catch a glimpse of the rare "comet of the century", but this won't be the only comet returning this year—GSA has plans in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 for COMET II, a multiple award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for IT modernization, transformation, and operations/maintenance. The current COMET vehicle, which stands for CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation, has awarded task orders totaling almost $1 billion, making it a great success for GSA and all contractors involved, especially when it comes to updating GSA’s legacy systems.
GSA wants to continue the success with COMET II, but make it larger and improve upon certain lessons learned. GSA recently released some more information about COMET II, including a draft Performance Work Statement (PWS), so here’s what we know so far about COMET II and how GSA plans to further the impact of this vehicle.
First, let’s talk about GSA’s current COMET and the background of this vehicle. Since COMET began in 2019, GSA has awarded over 20 task orders totaling over $950 million. When COMET was first introduced, the primary goal was modernization and focus on using a cloud smart strategy. Through COMET, they have learned how to move things to the cloud, understand zero trust architecture, and are now practicing and refining these processes.
COMET has been very successful, and GSA has high hopes for COMET II. After the initial award, GSA on-ramped several new small businesses since the original awardees outgrew their small business status.
Throughout the lifetime of this BPA, GSA and the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) have gone through several initiatives including GSAFleet.gov, Personal Property Management System, Supply Chain and NSN Management, FAS Catalog Platform, Cloud Information Center and SAM.gov updates.
These initiatives have been carried out using the FAS Cloud Services modernization ecosystem made possible from vendors involved in the COMET BPA. Since the period of performance for COMET ends in 2024, GSA wants to keep the vehicle going with COMET II, which we’ll dive into below.
GSA plans to continue to provide transformation and modernization IT services to help update GSA’s legacy systems in COMET II, but also expand the vehicle so there will be a larger ceiling and possibly more vendors. The ceiling is rumored to be closer to $2 billion. The scope of COMET II includes Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contractors with the following Special Item Numbers (SINs): SIN 5415S - IT Professional Services and SIN 518210C - Cloud Computing and Cloud Related IT Professional Services.
COMET II will have a stronger focus on small business participation and subcontracting. Using partial set-aside procedures, COMET II will be split into 2 awards: non set-aside and set-aside. GSA anticipates making 20 awards under COMET II with at least 50% of them going to small businesses.
This is always a burning question (and often unanswered) for contractors, but what will the timeline be for COMET II? In the industry day held last year, there was a loose timeline published but we have since passed those dates. Right now, we know that GSA released a Request for Quote (RFQ) in early October which closed a few days later. GSA released an updated PWS in this quote, and are taking the current responses into consideration. We hope to see more information such as a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) in early FY25.
We know it’s both exciting and daunting to see new opportunities pop-up, especially new contract vehicles. We’ll continue to monitor COMET II and other upcoming vehicles so you can stay updated on all things related to GSA news and contracting insights.
In the meantime, you can focus on making sure you are successfully maintaining your GSA Schedule and following best marketing practices. It’s important if you have any changes in your contract that you get a head start on it now. GSA Schedule modifications can take awhile and you want to be prepared for when this solicitation is officially released. Of course, our consultants are here to help direct you if you are interested in pursuing COMET II or other contract vehicles, or if you need help managing your GSA Schedule.