TTB - General Discussion, page-673

While I’ve been waiting for my buy order to get filled in the market, I did some investigation of the Sam website with the hope of understanding the timelines between the status of the VA opportunity moving from “intent to sole source” and “contract award imminent” and the actual award dates.

Seemingly most happen in relatively quick succession. I even managed to come across the public notices posted for the GRIT field that was announced August 2019 conducted in November 2019. Timeline as follows:

Intent to sole source (sam.gov) - 29 May 2019
Contract award to IBM (Sam.gov) - 26 June 2019
Justification and approval (Sam.gov) - 19 July 2019

Needless to say, I can understand why Louis holds the ‘any day now’ line - the dates we currently know for the actual roll-out are:

Intent to sole source - 15 June 2021 with anticipated award date 20 July 2021
Confirmation of sole source to IBM by Contract Specialist (@malkay - nice sleuthing) - 26 July 2021
Contract award to IBM - “any day now”

Let’s not forget this isn’t some pint sized consulting gig for IBM or VA - the total contract value will be a multimillion dollar contract (maybe even hundreds of millions at a guess judging by TTB’s anticipated portion of fees). Needless to say, I’m imagining everyone at VA is ensuring all the admin documentation has i’s dotted and t’s crossed, IBM’s investor / corporate affairs teams drafting press releases with VA’s press team, VA team reviewing wording and finally IBM trying to find the pen to sign the contracts, etc.

Any day now…