By Susan Karch, President GARDANT GLOBAL
09 August 2024
After 6:00 pm EDT on 8 August 2024, the NASA SEWP Program Office discretely posted an announcement in the System for Award Management (i.e., SAM.gov) informing any interested parties of “a strategic pause” on the RFP and announcing that the due date for proposals would be “extended at [an undefined] future date.”
Question: What caused this?
Revised Question: Did NASA fly too close to the sun?
Answer: The real answer is fraught with irony, but clear and direct for those who are able to read between the lines – NAICS codes
Updated Answer: NAICS codes and unreasonable, inefficient, and ineffective resources and capabilities including but not limited to (1) weakness of supply chain risk management processes, (2) deficient quality control and risk management practices, and (3) an overall lack of suitable controls.
NASA’s announcement tells the story: “NASA appreciates industry interest in the SEWP VI RFP and the submitted questions. We value collaboration, and we strive to ensure a transparent process for our industry partners.” The answer is translated here for purposes of actual transparency – like it or not, NASA’s SEWP VI Amendment 0006 pushed some members of industry too far and prompted many negative responses, feedback, and continued complaints about the RFP and Q&A (i.e., industry interest). NASA now understands that it must not discount industry questions (i.e., value collaboration) and must respond with clear and consistent answers about RFP instructions, evaluation criteria, and other requirements (i.e., transparent process).
Repeated knee-jerk reactions to industry feedback and complaints from pre-Solicitation efforts through Amendment 0006 were made in an apparent vacuum and therefore resolved and created issues at the same time.
The NAICS code answers and RFP edits in Amendment 0006 would have invalidated the Past Performance Reference(s) of many offerors, about two weeks prior to the Proposal Due Date of August 28, 2024 and the start of Government’s “busy season.”
NASA must regain control of this process, and this means collectively evaluating decisions, issues, edits necessary for the competition to move forward without additional risk or interruption.
The fix is easier and simpler than it may have seemed when NASA made its’ after business hours announcement to pause the SEWP VI RFP.