Here’s Who Might Dominate Alliant 2 Business

It’s been just a few weeks since the federal government’s buying hub awarded 61 businesses spots on a $50 billion tech contract, and one research and analysis firm is already predicting which contractors may snag the most business.

The General Services Administration's Alliant 2 governmentwide acquisition contract pre-approves certain vendors to sell IT services to government. The companies that won spots were selected to emphasize emerging technology such as artificial intelligence, according to the agency.

But only a few of them, potentially established contractors such as Lockheed Martin, will “end up winning most of the work,” according to a ranking by Govini. They’ll be competing not only on price, but also past performance and their ability to integrate cloud, data analytics, cyber, connected devices and artificial intelligence into agency contracts.

In an attempt to map out the competitive landscape, Govini ranked Alliant 2 awardees on their past performance on similar work they performed under other contracts and found about 25 companies have accounted for 91 percent of related work since fiscal 2012. The remainder was accounted for by 36 other awardees, according to the report.  

Govini assigned each company a value based on the dollar amount of their fiscal 2017 contract obligations and a five-year compound annual growth rate. It also took into consideration each company’s growth and whether it was an established or emerging force in the market. Based on those metrics, it assessed the 25 companies on their potential future growth in contracts, based on past growth and performance.  

CACI, CSRA, AT&T and Lockheed Martin are “perhaps best positioned to benefit from the contracting system,” Govini concluded. But their success isn’t guaranteed, because competitors that captured a smaller dollar amount exhibited significant growth, including ManTech, Deloitte, Jacobs Engineering, Parsons and AECO. Those companies “may present formidable competition to their more established peers,” the report said.

Govini also identified some companies that “are at a disadvantage when competing against other ranked peers” because of their low growth and relatively low chunk of past contracts within Alliant 2’s scope. Unisys, Leidos and Accenture fall into that category.

Based on agencies’ past contracts, Govini predicted the Pentagon will be the heaviest user of Alliant 2, because of the Air Force, Army and other defensewide contracts made up about 66.6 percent of contracts falling within Alliant 2’s scope, historically. On the civilian side, the State Department, General Services Administration, Agriculture Department and Justice Department will likely use it the most.