Payton Says If GPS III Contract Award Had Been Protested, Air Force Still Was Set To Let Winner Commence Work On Critically Needed Satellites
NEW YORK — The Department of Defense can lessen the chance that defense contractors will protest contract awards to rivals, if requirements for new hardware are precise and unambiguous, without vague or descriptive terms, the top Air Force procurement official said.
The key lies in crafting requests for proposals (RFPs) with greater care, said Gary Payton, the Air Force deputy under secretary for space programs, who previously has served as a NASA astronaut and as a Missile Defense Agency official.
“We have to write better RFPs, with key performance parameters in bidders’ proposals,” he said, “key performance parameters that we can evaluate and weigh [and] get rid of all of adjectives and adverbs.”
Rather than descriptive generalities, “you specify exactly what you want, and how valuable it is to you,” he said. In other words, the RFP will state clearly just how much weight will be given to each requirement that a bidding contractor fulfills with a proposed piece of hardware.
Also, the RFP must prioritize the various requirements in order, revealing which requirements are valued most, down to those valued least, he said.
“Mostly, though, it has got to do with RFPs that are simpler to read, simpler to propose to, and therefore easier to evaluate” when Pentagon officials begin reviewing bid proposals offered by rival contractors.
Clarity “reduces the confusion between the government and all the bidders, and that [ends up] being a better source selection that way.”
If all this is done in writing RFPs, he said, then That way, industry’s bids and the government’s needs can more exactly be matched up, and there is less confusion during the evaluation about the critical parameters and the priorities.”
Payton responded to an audience question while he participated in a panel discussion at the Space Business Forum New York 2009 presented by The Space Foundation at the Hilton New York Hotel. The questioner asked how the Pentagon leaders intend to get away from contract award protests, and endless litigation, so that after a contract award, the winning contractor immediately can begin work on the contract.
Payton acknowledged that the time wasted during contract protests is a concern.
While often the Pentagon will order a contractor to stop work during a protest review by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), he said last year the Air Force was prepared to plunge ahead and permit a winning contractor to continue work, if a protest were filed.
GPS III
Payton cited the Air Force GPS III contract awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] a year ago, an initial $1.5 billion pact that someday could expand to well over $3 billion for a dozen birds. Lockheed, the largest defense contractor, beat out its arch rival, The Boeing Co. [BA], the second-largest contractor.
If Boeing had protested the award, Payton said, the Air Force was willing to take a risk and let Lockheed proceed with work on the contract. “We were going to go ahead and keep the program going, in spite of [any] protest,” Payton said. However, a protest wasn’t filed.
“If there had been a protest on GPS III, that constellation [of satellites] is so critical, and the timing of GPS III is so critical, we would not stop that program. We would go ahead and continue the program through the protest,” because it was too important a program to slow it down, he said.
Some members of Congress have expressed concern that the number of GPS satellites now aloft might fall so low that full GPS service worldwide couldn’t be maintained. But Payton repeated assurances provided by the Air Force at congressional hearings that 24 satellites can provide full service, and currently there are 30 GPS satellites on orbit, plus others that can be used as backups. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Friday, May 22, 2009.)
He held out the Air Force GPS III contract award as a superior effort.
“We have a lot of confidence in the GPS III program, because we have acquired that program under the philosophy of what w call back to basics,” Payton said. Painstaking systems engineering, requirements workup, concept development, and even a systems requirements review in a competitive environment before awarding the contract, he said.
But the Air Force has seen protests of contracts in recent years.
For example, Boeing successfully protested to the GAO an Air Force award of an aerial refueling tanker plane contract worth perhaps $35 billion to a rival team, Northrop Grumman Corp. [NOC] offering a plane made by European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) unit Airbus Industrie.
On another Air Force contract protest, both Boeing and General Dynamics Corp. [GD] are appealing a decision by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding the government decision to cancel a plane that would have been called the A-12. The case has dragged on for more than a decade.
But the Air Force isn’t alone in having its contract awards challenged.
For example, Boeing recently renewed a protest of a NOAA-NASA contract for the GOES-R satellite contract to Lockheed.
Turning to operationally responsive space, Payton said improvement of this capability is going well. The United States needs to know when other nations launch satellites, for example.
“Three weeks ago we had a successful launch out of [the NASA launch facility at Wallops Island, Va.] of TacSat-3,” with the reconnaissance satellite well placed into orbit, Payton recalled. “It’s got a hyper spectral sensor on it, plus a couple of other” payload assets, he said. “And later this year we’ll have TacSat-4 also,” he noted, providing new technology to warfighters that is “a success story, so far.”
As well, the military is moving forward with Operationally Responsive Space-1, or ORS-1, which can be a gap-filler providing quick response for combatant commanders, he said.