Coast Guard’s Sentinel-Class Patrol Boat Contract Upheld by GAO

Guest post by RADM Gary Blore (CG-9), Assistant Commandant for Acquisition (from iCommandant)

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) yesterday issued a bid protest decision that upheld the U.S. Coast Guards award of the Sentinel-class Patrol Boat to Bollinger Shipyards, Inc.

GAO provides a forum for bidders and offerors seeking federal government contracts who believe that “a contract has been, or is about to be, awarded improperly or illegally or that they have been unfairly denied a contract or an opportunity to compete for a contract”.

We are of course very pleased with GAO’s decision. The Coast Guard had been confident, especially given the acquisition reforms our agency has put in place and with the rigor and discipline followed throughout the process for this patrol boat contract award, that GAO would ultimately uphold the Coast Guard?s decision. I appreciate the role that GAO plays in maintaining the transparency and equity of the federal procurement process and now that GAO has issued its decision, we can proceed with this critically important Coast Guard acquisition program.

With the release of this decision, the Coast Guard and Bollinger will resume working together on this project. The 153-foot Sentinel-class patrol boat will replace the 110-foot Island-class patrol boats, which have reached the end of their 20-year service lives.

Please note: The GAO decision was issued under the Protective Order GAO issued in connection with the case, so the decision cannot be made public. The Coast Guard anticipates that a redacted version of the decision will be published by GAO.

Coast Guards new Headquarters at St Elizabeths is a GO!

Elaine C. Duke, DHS Under Secretary for Management

A major milestone was reached for the Department January 8, 2009, when the St. Elizabeths Final Master Plan was approved by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC). For the past three and a half years we worked closely with the General Services Administration, and all of the consulting parties with an interest in St. Elizabeths, to develop a Master Plan for a consolidated Department of Homeland Security Headquarters – a plan that meets our minimum requirement of 4.5 million square feet of functional office space, plus necessary parking. This approval makes way for us to begin the first phase of the plan – construction of the Coast Guard facility on St. Elizabeths.

I can’t tell you enough how very pleased I am with the close cooperation and support we’ve received from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia government and the General Services Administration on this project. The D.C. City Council approved the East Campus Small Area Plan December 16, 2008, for redevelopment which provides for the 750,000 square feet of federal parcel to meet the minimum Department need. The breakthrough in the master plan development was the opportunity to synchronize the East Campus and West Campus developments for the benefit of both Homeland Security and the D.C. Government.

Non-Lethall Weapon to Stop Small Boats

From MarineLink.com

The U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) recently conducted a demonstration of a developmental non-lethal weapon designed to stop suspicious small boats. The program, referred to as Boat Trap, involves dropping an entangling net from a helicopter into the path of a boat. The net entangles in the boat’s propeller, forcing the vessel to a safe stop.

According to Darrel Webb, Maritime Project Engineer at the JNLWD, potential applications of the Boat Trap device include port security, protecting large vessels by reducing vulnerability to terrorists’ use of speed boats, and drug interdiction activities.

“Non-compliant small boat threats have elevated the importance of less-than-lethal technology to stop non-compliant vessels,” said Commander Eric Riepe, the Policy Division Chief for the Coast Guard Office of Law Enforcement. “Currently, the Boat Trap appears to have potential in stopping non-compliant vessels while executing Coast Guard law-enforcement missions.”

Read more here.

GAO FRC decision emboldens Coast Guard leadership

by Michael DeKort

From the Navy Times :

Statements from Adm. Blore

“We are of course very pleased with GAO’s decision. The Coast Guard had been confident, especially given the acquisition reforms our agency has put in place and with the rigor and discipline followed throughout the process for this patrol boat contract award, that GAO would ultimately uphold the Coast Guard’s decisions,” Blore wrote in a statement released today.

“It’s big because of the general statement it makes about our acquisition process because this is the same process we use for everything,” he said. “There is nothing unique about the patrol boat. It’s the way we do acquisitions. It’s nice that a very independent, experienced party, in the GAO, upheld that. We respect the fact that because of mistakes that have been made in the past we needed to improve our processes, and we think this upholding of the award of the contract does just that.”

Of course the GAO’s report is not out so we do not know what they reviewed and based their decision one.  We also do not know if they looked in to Bollinger’s performance on the 123project or simply chose to ignore it, as the Coast Guard did – citing that they were unable to include those issue in their determination because the DoJ and DHS IG had not finished their investigations.  Said differently – it appears that the 123 issues, outstanding refund, lack of accountability or understanding of what went wrong on the 123s and the desire of the ICGS parties and Bollinger to seek compensation from the government relative to the 123s played no part in anyone’s decision here. (The Coast Guard also had to increase funding to update the 110s that never became 123s.  That brings the 123 debacle monetary total to well over $200m.  Imagine if ICGS were able to collect further compensation because the government canceled the 123 program) Additionally it appears that the GAO may have been determined to make their decision prior to the Obama administration taking over as they finished 3 days earlier than their originally projected completion date in spite of making two changes to that date – pushing the final anticipated closure date to 2/25.

I guess we will have to wait and see what the GAO report states, what the DoJ and DHS IG come up with and what the Obama administration does with all of it.

Deepwater – not the solution it was supposed to be

by Michael DeKort

Today David Axe at WarIsBoring had this to say (and more):

“That’s great, and perfectly consistent with the new Maritime Strategy that calls for integrating all aspects of U.S. sea power. The problem is that the Coast Guard, in an effort to be better at these overseas missions, is neglecting its domestic duties, a point I raised in a recent piece for The Washington Monthly.

The $24-billion “Deepwater” modernization scheme, intended to equip the Coast Guard with long-range, heavily armed vessels better suited for overseas missions, is late, over-budget and wracked with technical failures, all of which have a knock-on effect on the Coastie fleet’s homeland patrols:

Even before Deepwater sprung leaks, the Coast Guard was struggling to be both an overseas counterterror force and a domestic safety and law enforcement agency. “We’re not doing as many inspections as we were, we’re not doing as much drug interdiction,” Vice Admiral James Hull, Atlantic Area commander, told USA Today in 2002. “Fisheries patrols are down a little bit. So we’re stressed.” And between the decommissioning of eight [leaky] patrol boats and the advanced age of the remaining forty, the Coast Guard says it has an approximately 10 percent shortfall in the total number of hours its patrol fleet can spend on missions. “

The Coast Guard Admiral discusses mission shortfalls that existed in 2002.  The Deepwater program was created, in large measure, to remedy this situation. Unfortunately the situation is much worse now than when Deepwater started.  The surface asset program is at least 50 ships and 5 or more years behind their original non-9/11 challenged schedule. Hopefully the Obama administration will look in to and remedy the situation.   (Yes the CG is updating the 123s and other assets.  However the 110 effort is a late recovery effort and they are still woefully behind as the 110s were mostly supposed to be gone by now with many FRCs and NSCs fielded by now. Wonder where the CG got the money to update 110’s it wasn’t supposed to have to update?  With the $96m refund hanging out and the contractors not only refusing to pay it but looking for compensation since the Coast Guard canceled the 123 project, I wonder what account the Coast Guard got that money from?  Is the $96 m on the books still?  Maybe there was a huge insurance pay off?)

Read David Axe’ entire article here.