Robbins-Gioia snags project management deal

Homeland Security Department officials have recently awarded Robbins-Gioia LLC a five-year blanket purchase agreement (BPA) for project management support services.

The company, based in Alexandria, Va., is the first vendor to be awarded the contract. DHS officials indicated in their request for proposals issued in December that they would award the contract to multiple vendors, possibly up to five.

DHS officials basically had three objectives in the contract, said Mike Sledge, Robbins-Gioia's vice president for civil agencies.

"They wanted to get support for their managers in planning and executing the various different programs and projects they have," he said. "They wanted to get a dashboard for senior mangers so that they can see what's going on by oversight of all the different initiatives. And they wanted to get best practices established for DHS project management."

Sledge said there's no real stated maximum value of the contract, "but it's anticipated to do about $5 million a year" in total. He said company officials requested DHS officials to describe how they'll administer the contract.

The department, which was formed early last year by merging 22 separate agencies and 183,000 employees, will be undergoing several major programs and projects over the next several years, including financial management and human resources systems.

"They're trying to really standardize on a core way of doing business from a program management perspective," said Sledge. "I think this will help provide consistency across the board in the way projects are implemented, executed and reported on. And it will provide a much more balanced way of viewing the effort the agency is making across the board."

A BPA vehicle, Sledge said, helps department managers select various businesses to support the different programs and projects without having to issue an RFP every time.

He said there's also a big push with the Office of Personnel Management to certify managers in project management. Even when agencies are developing a business case for a project, he said, OPM wants them to identify a project manager who is competent. The mentoring and best practices components of the contract should help in that regard, he added.