Why Bid an On-Ramp Due Five Days Before the Clock Stops?
The Army is taking proposals until Nov. 25 for new seats on TEIS IV, its Fort Huachuca systems engineering vehicle. The vehicle's base ordering period ends Nov. 30, the on-ramp clause makes new contracts coterminous with the old ones, and the option that would extend them is graded against four performance tests written for contractors who already held a seat.
Army Contracting Command at Fort Huachuca is accepting proposals until 4:00pm Arizona time on Nov. 25 for new seats on the Total Engineering and Integration Services IV vehicle.
The base ordering period on that vehicle ends Nov. 30.
Five days (chart below).
The notice is W91RUS27RA001, a combined synopsis/solicitation posted as a total small business set-aside under NAICS 541512 and PSC R425, run out of the ITEC4 Contracting Center on Arizona Street. The customer is USAISEC, the Army's information systems engineering command. The solicitation itself issued Aug. 18, Amendment 0002 moved proposals back from Oct. 30 to Nov. 25, and yesterday afternoon the office reposted the questions spreadsheet and the CONUS/OCONUS labor rate sheet with fresh dates on them.
So the government is still answering questions on a competition whose winners inherit an ordering period with 26 days left in it.
"What does a seat actually buy, when the vehicle it sits on stops taking orders before the award could plausibly land?"
The answer is in the solicitation, and it is more interesting than the deadline arithmetic suggests.
The clause says coterminous
Section F-8 of the conformed copy sets the shape:
The base ordering period for the TEIS IV multiple award IDIQ vehicle is five (5) years (ending 30 November 2026), with one five (5) year optional ordering period that may extend the cumulative ordering period of the contract to ten (10) years in accordance with FAR 52.217-9, Option to Extend the Term of the Contract, if exercised.
And the on-ramp narrative, paragraph 4.E, is unambiguous about what a new holder gets:
The ordering period of any new contracts resulting from the solicitation will be coterminous with the ordering period of the existing contracts under the TEIS IV multiple award IDIQ vehicle.
Coterminous cuts both ways.
If the Army exercises the five-year option, a seat won in this on-ramp runs to November 2031.
If it does not, the seat ends on the same Nov. 30 everyone else's does.
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