By Jeff Erlichman

Alliant and Alliant Small Business (SB) top a portfolio of GSA GWACs designed to meet every IT buyers’ need.

The sound you heard on April 29, 2009 was the collective cheer of GSA employees nationwide as the long awaited Alliant GWAC was given the official OK to start taking orders on May 1, 2009.

Now, the 59 Alliant awardees are gearing up their efforts to win your business. Add those to the 72 small businesses on Alliant SB and you have 131 reliable, vetted sources to perform your next IT project.

Alliant and Alliant SB are GSA’s new generation of GWACs. According to GSA’s Mary Powers-King, “the Alliant programs are successor contracts to the ANSWER and Millennia GWACs (both are slated to expire in 2010).”

“The scope of Alliant includes any and all components of an integrated IT solution,” said Powers-King. “Alliant provides IT solutions through performance of a broad range of services which may include the integration of various technologies critical to the services being acquired.”


Alliant is a 10-year multiple award IDIQ contract with a base period of 5 years, one 5-year option and a contract ceiling of $50B. Alliant SB has a $15 billion program ceiling and a five-year base period with one, five-year option.


Alliant and Alliant SB – The Cat’s Meow

“We think that Alliant is the most comprehensive and flexible IT contract on the market for services and solutions,” Jim Ghiloni, Alliant PM told 1105 Government Information Group Custom Media in a recent interview.

“Customers have the flexibility to customize their requirements to ensure they get a solution that is very responsive to their unique situation,” noted Ghiloni. “They not only have access to broad array of solution sets from industry, those industry partners have a lot of flexibility in building teams to meet a particular requirement.”

Because it’s a GSA GWAC, there are additional layers of transparency and oversight behind the scenes to make sure the contract is being used appropriately.

“Agencies retain total control of their evaluation process and awards cycle,” said Ghiloni. The contract allows for streamlined acquisition in accordance with FAR Part 16 that can really cut short the procurement lifecycle and allows people to fulfill their mission requirements much sooner than using other methods.

Alliant and Alliant SB are the culmination of years of hard work at GSA said John Johnson, who recently retired as GSA’s ITS Assistant Commissioner. And they are part of GSA’s larger master plan to provide IT product and service solutions.

“We are trying to minimize the number of GWACs that we have; ANSWER and Millennia are two that come to mind,” explained Johnson. “When you take that into account we have about 4,600 schedules contracts and a whole host of network service contracts (Networx), we think that we have pretty much a “one stop shop” for anything IT within the federal and state space.”

GSA Is GWAC Central

Alliant and Alliant SB may garner all the publicity, but they are not the only GWACs that GSA manages.

COMMITS NexGen is a task order contract that offers IT solutions to federal customers with a streamlined acquisition methodology and provide competitive IT solutions from a pool of exceptional small, disadvantaged, 8(a), women-owned, veteran-owned, service disabled veteran-owned, and HUBZone businesses. Learn more at www.gsa.gov/commits.


8(a) STARS is a small business set aside. This contract vehicle provides small businesses historically left out of the procurement process with a chance to compete in the federal marketplace.  Customers have access to a portfolio of over 200 industry partners distributed across eight areas of expertise. Federal agencies also receive 8(a) and other small business credits toward their procurement preference goals through the use of these contracts. Learn more at www.gsa.gov/8astars .

The Veterans Technology Services (VETS) is a small business set-aside contract for service-disabled veteran-owned (SDVO) small technology firms. VETS presents a new way for federal agencies to achieve small business goals through purchase of Information Technology solutions from small businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. Learn more at www.gsa.gov/vetsgwac .


Relationship Building

Johnson, Powers-King and Ghiloni are committed to customer service and building lasting relationships.

It starts with the Delegation of Procurement Authority (DPA) training required to use a GWAC.

“We do everything in our power to make that process as easy and unobtrusive as possible, while still ensuring that we are providing the appropriate level of training for the customers,” explained Ghiloni.

“We use that process to build a relationship with our customers,” said Ghiloni. “In addition to doing the delegation training we have a scope review process.”

What that means is you can send GSA your SOW prior to issuing a task order and GSA will review that and comment on whether or not it is in scope. “We also take that opportunity to talk to the customer about their requirements and mission and better ways they can do their procurement,” added Ghiloni.

What GSA can provide is access to a large number of best practices in IT procurement and provide advice on how to tailor evaluation factors and how to do a multiphase acquisition. Ghiloni said on the small business side GSA can help to do capabilities assessments and market research as well as providing data for cost estimations.

“We really try to provide a lot of value to our customers above and beyond offering the contracts themselves, which has an inherent value,” said Ghiloni. “We’re bringing all of those tools, techniques and process to Alliant and Alliant SB and all of our contracts to ensure that successful relationship continues into the future.”

“We have a very special and successful relationship with our customers in GWACs, high customer satisfaction scores and a great deal of reuse of the vehicles,” said Ghiloni. “We have really built a relationship.” Now it’s your time to take advantage of it.