The Navy Department will not, after all, release as planned on Dec. 21 a final request for proposals for its massive Navy/Marine Corps Next Generation Enterprise Network.

In an announcement posted online Dec. 9, the Naval Enterprise Networks Program Management Office said it now intends to just release by Dec. 19 updated portions of the draft RFP it made public on Sept. 30.

Specifically, the office says it will release updated versions of sections L and M of the RFP. Federal RFPs come in a standardized format: Section L is instructions to offerors and section M is the evaluation criteria.

The already-announced evaluation criteria of "lowest price, technically acceptable" will remain unchanged, according sources close to the NGEN procurement, but the Navy will change some of the technically acceptable criteria such as the minimum number of seats a contractor needs to have already managed.

During an Oct. 28 NGEN press availability, program director Capt. Shawn Hendricks said the draft RFP's requirement that contractors have had experience managing 100,000 seats is too great. The new section M could lower that number down to 40,000.

During the press availability, Hendricks also said he estimated NGEN could cost the Navy Department about $2 billion a year; a later estimate put out by the program office says $1.5 billion annually should be the upper limit.

For more:
- go to the Dec. 9 announcement on FedBizOps

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