The Fourth Bridge at Falls Church
The Defense Health Agency published a notice of intent this morning to hand Deloitte a fourth consecutive sole-source bridge on its program management support requirement. The competed vehicle underneath it expired three years ago, the market research is thirty months old, and the work on the books has fallen from $50.7 million to $3.9 million along the way.
A bridge contract is supposed to be the thing that happens once, while the real competition catches up. The count is the part nobody wants in writing.
The Defense Health Agency has started putting it in the title.
At 12:22 Zulu this morning, DHA's Professional Services Contracting Division posted a special notice out of 7700 Arlington Boulevard. The title field reads Program Management Support Services Bridge 4.
Last September's read Program Management Support Services 3rd Bridge. The two before that carried no count at all, so DHA started keeping score somewhere around the third one.
Solicitation PANDHA-26-P-0000-046996, NAICS 541611, PSC R408, responses due 10:00 a.m. Eastern on October 12. The intended awardee is Deloitte Consulting LLP, which has held this requirement without a competition since 2023.
What the Number in the Title Means
The count is real and every leg of it is in the award record.
Before the bridges there was a competition.
BPA HT001120A1011 went to Deloitte off solicitation HT001117R0020, coded full and open with 3 offers received, a $134,150,835.87 ceiling, and an ordering period running from September 2020 to September 30, 2023. Three annual calls came off it: $23.6M, $30.0M, then $31.4M.
The BPA stopped taking orders, and the recompete did not arrive. What arrived instead:
- Bridge 1, contract HT001123C0098, awarded September 29, 2023 for the twelve months to September 30, 2024. $50,730,314.71. The synopsis that preceded it went up on August 6 with a response deadline of August 10, a 4-day window.
- Bridge 2, HT001124C0031, awarded September 30, 2024 for FY2025. Published estimate $38M, award notice $35,898,855.51, $22,116,326.17 actually obligated.
- Bridge 3, HT001126CE005, published estimate $5.2 million against CLINs 0001 through 0005, tentative award date September 30, 2025. It was signed November 13, 2025 for $3,865,672.44, leaving a 44-day hole between the end of bridge 2 and the start of bridge 3.
- Bridge 4, posted this morning, with no dollar estimate published at all.
Every one of the three awarded bridges is coded the same way in the record: NOT COMPETED, solicitation procedures ONLY ONE SOURCE, 1 offer received, firm fixed price, definitive contract. Not an order under anything. A standalone contract, three years running.
From the first bridge award to this morning's notice is 1,092 days.
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