This week Perspecta filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) over Leidos’ [LDOS] win of the Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network Re-compete (NGEN-R) contract.
According to the GAO docket, the protest was filed on March 9 and will be decided by June 17.
This follows a similar protest by General Dynamics’ [GD] Information Technology subsidiary that field a protest with the GAO on March 4 over the SMIT contract (Defense Daily, March 5).
A Navy spokesperson confirmed to Defense Daily the service stopped all work on the Leidos NGEN-R SMIT contract after General Dynamics lodged its protest.
The spokesperson said all work stops once a protest is lodged while GAO adjudicates the matter.
The Navy also confirmed a “kick-off” meeting between the Navy and Leidos, which the company announced in February, has been delayed until after the GAO decision (Defense Daily, Feb. 11).
NGEN-R replaces the legacy NGEN contract vehicle that provides information technology capability and support services to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) and Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN). NGEN-R will also add IT coverage outside the continental United States with the OCONUS Navy Enterprise Network (ONE-Net).
The Navy split the NGEN-R contract between the end-user hardware (EUHW) contract and Service Management, Integration and Transport (SMIT) sections in a bid to save money.
Last month, the Navy awarded Leidos the $7.7 billion NGEN-R SMIT contract in a competition with these three entrants. The contract runs for five years through 2025 but includes three one-year option periods that would have it run through August 2028 and reach the full $7.7 billion value (Defense Daily, Feb. 6).
The SMIT section includes base network services covered by the current NGEN vehicle like electronic software delivery, end user core build, endpoint detection, logistics management, network operations, security operations, service desk, transport and virtualization services.
Previously, the Navy awarded the potential $1.4 billion EUHW portion of NGEN-R to Hewlett Packard, Inc. subsidiary HPI Federal LLC [HPQ] in October (Defense Daily, Oct. 9, 2019).