GSA is building a national design bench to match its national construction bench

On October 29 GSA’s Public Buildings Service issued a sources sought notice for multiple-award architect-engineer IDIQ contracts covering federally owned and federally leased real property nationwide. It is market research, not a solicitation. GSA anticipates awarding multiple contracts with a five-year base and one five-year option, supporting GSA zones and client agencies across the United States and its territories, with typical task orders above the $350,000 simplified acquisition threshold. The applicable codes are NAICS 541310 and 541330.

The scope is the whole project life cycle rather than a single discipline: feasibility and pre-design studies, master planning, cost estimating, real estate market analysis, existing-conditions surveys, building condition reports, environmental reviews and energy audits, concept through construction documents, interior design including furniture and equipment, constructability review, submittal review, management and inspection during construction, commissioning, and closeout documents. Underneath that sits the work GSA actually buys most of — full mechanical, electrical and plumbing design, structural evaluation, façade evaluation and remediation, water infiltration mitigation, fire and life safety, seismic and blast protection, vertical transportation and code compliance on buildings that are already standing and already occupied.

Six weeks ago the same part of GSA asked industry how to build a nationwide large construction IDIQ. This is the design half of the same idea, and it arrives the same way: a short notice, a five-page response, and a question about set-asides that gets answered by whoever responds. The firms that end up on a national bench are chosen from a pool that forms now.