Shortly after the start of the second Gulf War, the Marine Corps established a new business model to procure contract support services for Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC). That model – Commercial Enterprise Omnibus Support Services (CEOss) – allowed the Corps to establish ordering agreements with a group of contractors and compete task orders among them.
While a significant improvement, over time CEOss began showing serious limitations, according to Supervisory Contracting Officer-Command Support Angela Apperson.
“It worked well for the purpose for which it was established and we were able to have competition and definitely developed a business base with a number of contractors brought into the Quantico [Va.] area. So there were more voices and competition, utilizing the GSA [General Services Administration] to compete contracts,” she said.
William Kelly, a Deployed Virtual Training analyst with Operations and Training, prepares an air strike simulation with the Virtual Battle Simulation 2 at Building 1655 on July 13, 2011. SeaPort-e also includes simulation support in its 22 functional areas. DoD photo by Cpl. Andrew D. Thorburn
“Eventually, we had approximately 40 blanket purchase agreements [BPAs] in place. The business model included four different domains, each with five to 10 BPAs for engineering-, logistics-, or business-type work, with each order competed within those domains. Once a year, generally, we would give an opportunity to have a new BPA put in place and different team members. It was an important business model, with a positive impact on the command, community, and business base, but by 2011, it was time to move on.”
While MCSC developed the CEOss business model, the Navy instituted a different system, called SeaPort, designed around multiple award contracts (MACs) with innovative contracting, including a Web-based e-procurement portal solution.
In 2004, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) initiated SeaPort Enhanced (SeaPort-e), primarily to satisfy the specific missions and requirements of the Surface and Undersea Warfare Centers through 22 functional areas:
- Research and Development Support
- Engineering, System Engineering, and Process Engineering Support
- Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Support
- Prototyping, Pre-production, Model-making, and Fabrication Support
- System Design Documentation and Technical Data Support
- Software Engineering, Development, Programming, and Network Support
- Reliability, Maintainability, and Availability (RM&A) Support
- Human Factors, Performance, and Usability Engineering Support
- System Safety Engineering Support
- Configuration Management (CM) Support
- Quality Assurance (QA) Support
- Information System (IS) Development, Information Assurance (IA), and Information Technology (IT) Support
- Inactivation and Disposal Support
- Interoperability, Test and Evaluation, and Trials Support
- Measurement Facilities, Range, and Instrumentation Support
- Logistics Support
- Supply and Provisioning Support
- Training Support
- In-service Engineering, Fleet Introduction, Installation, and Checkout Support
- Program Support
- Functional and Administration Support
- Public Affairs and Multimedia Support
SeaPort-e provides a central platform through which prequalified contractor teams compete for Navy work under a consistent procurement process that allows the command “to leverage quality control and work requirements for its directorates, PEOs, and field activities,” according to NAVSEA. “The MAC contracts provide a guaranteed savings clause that will enable NAVSEA to achieve cost savings and a mechanism for the automatic conversion to performance-based requirements.”