Late last month, the Navy released a request for proposals to Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] and General Dynamics [GD] NASSCO for the detailed design and construction of its next amphibious assault ship (LHA-8) and the first six T-AO(X) oilers.
The competitors will submit a combined bid that includes both ship classes, and the stakes are high—those proposals will influence the award of early ship design contracts for the Navy’s new class of big deck amphibs, with the lowest bidder to receive approximately 75 percent of that work, a Navy official told Defense Daily.
The RFP was released solely to NASSCO and HII and was not posted publicly on the Federal Business Opportunities website.
“The Navy is pursuing a limited competition procurement approach so the RFP was sent only to Ingalls and NASSCO,” service spokeswoman Cmdr. Thurraya Kent said in a written statement. “They are the only two sources with the current capability to build both LHA-8 and T-AO(X) and the requisite knowledge of amphibious and auxiliary ship design, construction and systems to efficiently and effectively construct the large deck amphibious and auxiliary ships within the required construction period and perform the associated services.”
“It is not uncommon to distribute a limited competition solicitation and/or sole source solicitation to the limited source offerors and not to post the solicitation to FedBizOpps,” she added.
The combined solicitation was released on June 25, and bids are due this fall. The responses will not be publicly released, Kent said.
Under the parameters of the competition, the vendors must submit proposals for both ships and are guaranteed to win either a contract for the lot of six oilers or LHA-8. However, the competitor with the lowest combined bid will also win a larger proportion of the early design work for the Navy’s next amphibious ship class, the LX(R). The service estimates that the value of the six oilers is equivalent to the larger, more expensive LHA-8.
“The offeror with the lowest combined LHA 8 and T-AO(X) total evaluated price will be awarded the majority of LX(R) contract design (CD) engineering man-hours through a Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee Level of Effort contract line item,” Kent told Defense Daily. “The offeror with the highest combined LHA-8 and T-AO(X) total evaluated price will be awarded the minority of LX(R) CD engineering man-hours. The award of the CD efforts does not represent a commitment to a future DD&C construction contract award for LX(R).”
Earlier this year, Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley told a Senate panel that the service chose to issue a combined solicitation to drive competition between the vendors that would result in more affordable proposals (Defense Daily, March 18). The approach would also help sustain the shipbuilding industrial base—chiefly San Diego-based NASSCO, which makes only one ship class for the Navy, the Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB). NASSCO delivered the first AFSB, USNS Lewis B. Puller, to the service in June and expects to start construction on a second ship this year.
However, a contract for a third vessel isn’t planned until fiscal year 2017, leaving NASSCO “in peril,” according to Stackley.
“If we were to go down a path of open competition, and soliciting these one at a time, there is tremendous uncertainty in terms of what the outcome would be in terms of our industrial base and the affordability of those programs,” he said of the LHA and T-AO(X) competition.
Procurement of the first oiler and LHA-8 is scheduled to begin in fiscal year 2016 and 2017, respectively. LX(R) construction is slated to kick off in 2020, but both the House and Senate’s 2016 defense authorization bills contained additional funding for the ship, which could push the timeline to the left.
HII’s facility for building amphibs is located in Pascagoula, Miss.