Up to $17.4M to Unisys for Military Global Freight Management
Jun 23, 2009 11:10 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) awarded Unisys a firm-fixed-price task order (HTC711-09-F-0030) to design, develop and maintain the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command’s (SDDC) Global Freight Management (GFM) system. Using GFM, the U.S. Defense Department purchases commercial freight transportation services for everything from missiles to cotton balls, according to Bob Burkard, Global Freight Management project manager at Unisys Federal Systems. Under the task order, Unisys will also provide project management and integration services, e-commerce solutions, systems training, and software testing and documentation.
The task order, awarded under the GSA Schedule 70 contract (GS-35F-0343J), has a 5-month base period, followed by four 1-year options and a final 7-month option. The options are exercisable at the discretion of the government. The contract has a value of $1.4 million for the 5-month base period and a total value of $17.4 million if all options are exercised. The award follows the recompete of a task order awarded to Unisys in October 2006, which had expired.
DID has more on how the GFM system works and how shippers compete for DoD contracts…
The SDDC, part of the U.S. Transportation Command, manages all DoD surface freight movement and is responsible for purchasing and approving freight transport services from the U.S. carrier industry. The GFM system automates carrier selection, costing, shipment documentation and management of DoD freight movements. The system also provides shipment information on DoD assets that includes in-transit visibility between origin and destination.
Commercial freight carriers file their rates on the GFM system, while the military services use the system’s Freight Acquisition Shipping Tool to enter the details of their shipping requirements, such as the shipping origin and destination, the nature of the cargo, and the timeframe required. The system then matches the shipment requirements with the services provided by the carriers. Spot Bid, another GFM component, is used to conduct a reverse auction in which the qualifying bidder with the lowest cost is awarded the business.
Unisys also provides online training and other support services to users of the GFM system, which supports more than 10,000 users across approximately 2,000 sites.
