Navy releases SeaPort Next Gen RFP

By Justin Katz / June 1, 2018 at 11:59 AM

The Navy today published the formal request for proposals for the SeaPort Next Generation program.

SeaPort Next Gen is the latest iteration of SeaPort-e, a services contracting vehicle established in 2001 and administrated by Naval Sea Systems Command.

The Navy has made several changes between SeaPort-E and SeaPort Next Gen in an effort to increase competition among vendors and decrease administrative costs.

Among those changes is a requirement to have contracting experience in direct support of the Navy and no longer have contractors self-identify into a combination of geographical and functional areas.

Under SeaPort-e, "if you only wanted to work in one geographic area and one functional area, you had to wait for work to come out in that cell in order for you to be eligible to bid, and then you had to win the work," Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council, told Inside the Navy in March.

"I think what [the Navy's] experience was that not every functional area had the same quantity of work, and certainly not every region had the same quantity of work," he said.

SeaPort Next Gen will use only two broad functional areas: engineering support and program management support.

Naval Air Systems Command, which used SeaPort-E, last year decided to not use SeaPort Next Gen and is pursuing its own contractor services vehicle.

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