Contract Vehicles: SEWP, OASIS+, GSA MAS, and CIO-SP

Federal agencies rarely run a full, ground-up competition for every purchase. Instead, a substantial share of spending flows through contract vehicles: umbrella contracts, already competed and awarded to a pool of qualified companies, under which specific purchases are then made through faster task order or delivery order competitions limited to that pool. NASA both operates its own vehicles and uses vehicles run by other agencies. This chapter explains the major categories and the most significant vehicles relevant to NASA work.

GWAC versus MAC versus agency-specific vehicle

A Multiple Award Contract (MAC) is any contract vehicle awarded to more than one company, with subsequent work competed among the holders rather than opened to the entire market each time. A Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) is a specific, statutorily authorized type of MAC restricted to information technology, which any federal agency can use, and which is operated by an agency granted authority to run it on the government's behalf. NASA SEWP is a GWAC. Some vehicles are broader than IT but still open governmentwide, such as OASIS+; others are restricted to a single agency's own use, called agency-specific vehicles, and are not available to other agencies at all.

NASA SEWP

NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) is one of the government's principal IT hardware and IT-related services GWACs, managed by NASA on behalf of the entire federal government. It is widely used across civilian and defense agencies, not just NASA itself, to purchase computer hardware, networking equipment, cybersecurity products, and associated services. SEWP is organized into multiple contract groups with different eligibility profiles, including groups reserved for small businesses. It is renewed periodically as a new generation of the contract, with a competition to select the pool of holders for that generation. The authoritative source for current SEWP information, including the current holder list and ordering guides, is sewp.nasa.gov.

GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS)

The General Services Administration's Multiple Award Schedule, often still called simply "the Schedule," is a long-running governmentwide contracting program covering an extremely broad range of commercial products and services, from professional services to scientific equipment. Unlike a GWAC restricted to IT, MAS spans nearly every commercial category the government buys. A company applies directly to GSA to be awarded a Schedule contract, a process that is open on a rolling basis rather than tied to a fixed competition window, and once on Schedule, it can be ordered against by any federal agency, including NASA centers, using streamlined ordering procedures.

OASIS+

OASIS+ is a governmentwide MAC for professional services, covering categories such as program management, engineering, logistics, and scientific services, managed by GSA. It succeeded the original OASIS vehicle and was structured with pools organized by North American Industry Classification System code and socioeconomic category, and with an ongoing on-ramp structure intended to periodically add new holders rather than closing the pool permanently at initial award. NASA centers use OASIS+ for a range of professional and engineering support services that fall outside a pure IT scope.

CIO-SP

CIO-SP is a GWAC managed by the National Institutes of Health's IT Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC), covering IT services and health IT categories somewhat broader than SEWP's hardware-centric scope. Like SEWP, it is available governmentwide, including to NASA, and it is periodically recompeted into a new generation with its own holder competition.

How companies actually get on, and onto, these vehicles

• Compete directly in the initial full-and-open solicitation that establishes a new generation of a vehicle
• Compete in a subsequent on-ramp, a later solicitation the vehicle's program office runs specifically to add new holders to an existing pool
• Team as a subcontractor to an existing prime holder, performing work under the vehicle without holding a prime position on it directly
• Pursue a GSA Schedule contract on a rolling basis, since MAS does not operate on the same closed-pool, periodic-recompete model as most GWACs and MACs

Reaching a vehicle through an existing holder is often the fastest practical path for a company that does not yet hold a prime position, and it works the same way subcontracting works on any other NASA contract, described in the chapter on subcontracting and teaming. Once work is competed under any of these vehicles, it typically proceeds as a task order or delivery order competition among holders, a distinct process covered in the next chapter on IDIQs, BPAs, and task order competition.

A note on scope discipline

Every vehicle has a defined scope, and task orders placed under it must reasonably fall within that scope; agencies and holders alike are expected to police this, and out-of-scope orders can be challenged. A company evaluating whether a given vehicle fits its business should read the vehicle's actual scope language and NAICS code assignments, described in Chapter 3, rather than assume fit from the vehicle's name alone. Authoritative program information for each of these vehicles is maintained by the managing agency: NASA for SEWP, and GSA for OASIS+ and the Multiple Award Schedule, at gsa.gov.