The 90-Day Precipice: Recompeting a Requirement That Doesn't Exist Yet
Your agency's IT service desk contract - 24/7 support for 3,100 users, $4.2M over the past five years - expires in 94 days. The incumbent has held the work for eight years through two noncompetitive modifications, and the Inspector General's latest audit called the arrangement a 'de facto sole source.' The program office has no approved requirements package; the COR says the current statement of work 'mostly works.' Your supervisor wants a sole-source bridge to the incumbent and a recompete next fiscal year. Option-year funding is unobligated, the small business specialist is asking whether the requirement was ever analyzed for set-aside potential, and your market research file contains one RFI from 2019 that drew two responses.
1. Evaluate the proposed sole-source bridge. What must exist in the file before you sign a justification, and which urgency theory is defensible?
Read the worked answer
The bridge may be legitimate, but the reasoning must be honest about cause. Two authorities are often confused:
- Only one responsible source requires evidence that no other source can meet the need - which you cannot assert while your market research is a five-year-old RFI with two responses.
- Unusual and compelling urgency is available, but the resulting urgency must not be created by the agency's own lack of advance planning. Here the requirement has been known for eight years; a 94-day runway is a self-inflicted condition, not an unforeseen event. Stretching this authority is exactly the pattern the IG already flagged.
The file must contain, at minimum: current market research (posted RFI or sources-sought, plus outreach to the small business community); an approved acquisition plan with milestones; a documented set-aside/consolidation analysis; an independent government estimate; and a justification that addresses why the incumbent alone can perform during the bridge period - phase-in knowledge, security clearance holdings, proprietary data - rather than 'it's easier.' Build the bridge around a defined, non-recurring transition scope and a firm end date.
Judgment point: a bridge is a schedule tool, not a substitute for competition strategy. If the justification's facts would embarrass you in an audit, the plan is wrong, not the paperwork.
2. The supervisor insists there is no time for anything but a bridge. Design a parallel path that both keeps the service running and restores competition, and state what you would refuse to do.
Read the worked answer
Run the bridge and the recompete on parallel tracks with separate owners and dates.
Track A - continuity (days 1–90): Confirm whether the current contract contains an extension-of-services clause; if it does, a short extension buys time without a new justification. If it does not, execute the narrow bridge with a defined transition scope, a hard end date, and no option years.
Track B - recompete (days 1–60):
- Draft a performance-based PWS from outcomes (ticket resolution, availability, escalation), not from the incumbent's current text.
- Post a sources-sought notice with a draft PWS and a capabilities questionnaire; set a 10-day response window.
- Hold industry day or one-on-ones; log everything in the market research file.
- Make the set-aside decision on the record, using the responses as evidence.
- Approve the acquisition plan and source selection plan; post the solicitation.
What to refuse: signing a justification that recites urgency created by the agency, and letting the bridge's scope creep into the recompete's scope. Also refuse to skip the set-aside analysis on the theory that the bridge 'settles it' - the bridge covers months, the recompete covers five years.
3. The small business specialist asserts the requirement must be set aside because 'IT services are always small business.' How do you handle that position?
Read the worked answer
Treat it as a hypothesis to test, not a conclusion either way. Set-aside decisions rest on a reasonable expectation that at least two responsible small businesses will submit offers and that award will be made at a fair market price - an expectation you build from market research, not from the nature of the work.
Concretely: review the responses to the sources-sought notice; check the Small Business Administration's dynamic small business search and the agency's small business database for firms with the relevant scope; look at whether the incumbent is other-than-small and at what size the market actually clears; and ask whether the security or 24/7 staffing requirements are genuinely limiting or merely inherited boilerplate.
The strongest position is documented and reversible. If four credible small firms respond, set aside (or use a small business reserve) and record the reasoning. If only one does and it is a pass-through reseller, document why a set-aside is not feasible and proceed with a full and open competition that includes evaluation factors favoring small business participation. Either way, the analysis goes in the file before the solicitation posts - after the fact, it is a finding waiting to happen.