Resource
Advancing Artificial Intelligence Multiple Award Contract (AAMAC)
March 14, 2025
Overview
On Sept. 4, 2024, the Department of Defense (DOD) Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) published a Sources Sought Notice synopsis to identify and determine qualified sources who can help the CDAO build a competitive, adaptive and responsive ecosystem of digital products and services providers around the largest DOD data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Advana.
The DOD’s CDAO is the lead organization responsible for accelerating the DOD’s adoption of data, analytics and AI to generate decision advantage, from the boardroom to the battlefield. The DOD CDAO intends to establish a new multiple award indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (MA-IDIQ) contract in support of the Advancing Artificial Intelligence Multiple Award Contract (AAMAC) program.
The AAMAC IDIQ will support potential projects that leverage the CDAO’s and the DOD’s enterprise data, analytics, and/or AI capabilities to enhance decision-making processes and practices for any DOD customer(s), as well as provide the data engineering, data analytics tools, shared services and infrastructure for the CDAO Advana program at the platform layer and below.
Since the initial sources sought in early September, CDAO held an Advana industry day on Sept. 18, 2024, and released a first draft request for proposal (RFP) for the AAMAC on Nov. 20, 2024, followed by an amended first draft RFP on Feb. 2, 2025.
While the final RFP is still under development, Baker Tilly has performed a detailed review of all available draft solicitation materials and summarized the latest details below.
Ordering period
AAMAC is valued at $15 billion. Its period of performance is five years base plus five-year options. The award type is an agency IDIQ, and DOD will make multiple awards. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 541511 (Custom Computer Programming Services) which has a Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard of $34 million.
Who can bid
AAMAC is subject to a partial small business set-aside, in that IDIQ awards will be made under an Unrestricted (UR) Pool and Small Business (SB) Pool, based on successful offerors’ business size. By default, offerors will be evaluated for award under the UR Pool, and all small business awardees in the UR Pool will also be automatically awarded under the SB Pool.
The government will be utilizing a Highest Technically Rated Offeror (HTRO) self-scoring methodology, which requires offerors to score themselves as well as substantiate their self-score.
It should be noted that an offeror can only submit one proposal in response to the solicitation and if an offeror submitted as a member of a joint venture, they cannot submit separately as a standalone prime.
Proposal format
The current AAMAC draft RFP (Feb. 2, 2025) Section L “Instructions” for AAMAC state that an offeror’s proposal shall comprise of the following three volumes consisting of:
Volume I – Technical
- Work sample cover sheet
- Work samples
- Self-scoring matrix
- Cross-reference matrix
- Certifications
Volume II – Small business
- Small business participation commitment document
- Small business subcontracting plan
Volume III – Contract documentation
- Offeror company information
- Model contract
- Representations and certifications
- Amendments
- Organizational conflict of interest
- Organizational structure change history
Self-score matrix and work samples
While Volumes II and III consist of many of the familiar administrative items we typically see with an RFP response, Volume I – Technical, is where offerors will spend the most time preparing to ensure they are maximizing their score and submitting a compliant proposal with enough substantiation evidence.
The Technical Volume’s self-score matrix consists of 18 unique scoring criterion with a maximum total possible score of 97,500. The scoring criterion and associated maximum points can be found in the table below.
AAMAC scoring table
| Criterion number | Criterion description | Maximum points | Limitations |
| 1 | Systems management, architecture and engineering | 10,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 2 | Software engineering | 6,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 3 | Data engineering | 6,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 4 | Data analytics | 2,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 5 | Artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) | 10,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 6 | Cybersecurity | 8,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 7 | Managed services | 6,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 8 | Workflow modernization | 4,000 | Category 1 and 2 are authorized. No more than five work samples. |
| 9 | Other transaction for prototype software | 12,000 | Category 1 only. No more than three work samples. |
| 10 | Small business innovation research and technology transfer | 6,000 | Category 1 only. No more than three work samples. |
| 11 | Highest value contract | 1,000 | Category 1 only. No more than one work sample. |
| 12 | User growth | 4,000 | Category 1 Only. No more than 1 Work Sample |
| 13 | Peak number of users supported | 3,000 | Category 1 only. No more than one work sample. |
| 14 | Continuous/ongoing authorizations to operate | 15,000 | Category 1 only. No more than four work samples. | 15 | Facility clearance | 3,000 | Category 1 only. No more than one work sample. |
| 16 | CMMI-SVC Level 3 | 500 | Category 1 only. | 17 | CMMI-DEV Level 3 | 500 | Category 1 only. |
| 18 | ISO/IEC 27001 | 500 | Category 1 only. | Total maximum possible points | 97,500 |
When it comes to scoring, the first 15 of the 18 scoring criterion are related to “work samples” (i.e., relevant project experience). Work samples are defined as “contracts/orders” which demonstrate the offerors technical capability and experience. Offerors can submit up to 12 work samples with their proposal response that can be utilized across multiple criterion. Additionally, of the 12 work samples, large businesses offerors may include up to two subcontracts, while small business offerors may include up to five subcontracts. This caveat is further explained by the Category 1 and Category 2 definitions of work samples below.
Category 1: Prime offeror work samples shall be used. To be used, the offeror shall have acted as the prime contractor for the submitted work sample. For joint ventures (JV), the work of any JV member may be utilized.
Category 2: Subcontractor work samples may be used. To be used, the prime offeror shall have acted as a subcontractor for the submitted work sample.
Offerors can maximize their scoring by identifying work samples that meet the minimum recency criteria of at least six months of performance or completed within four years of the solicitation’s release date and address as many of the 15 work sample technical area scoring criterion definitions outlined in the AAMAC RFP.
The remaining three scoring criterion are scored on whether the offeror has a valid ISO/IEC 27001, CMMI-SVC Level 3, and CMMI-DEV Level 3 certifications.
Other considerations
While AAMAC may seem like a typical self-evaluation, scorecard proposal, there are several unique considerations that offerors should be aware of before preparing their proposals.
Contractor teaming arrangements
While the requirements and limitations of teaming arrangements are not explicitly defined in the latest draft RFP, the government has stated via the latest SAM.gov announcement—and again within the industry feedback Q&A responses—that, “Based on the preponderance of the initial draft RFP feedback, teaming for purposes of enhancing a prime offeror’s score for an AAMAC IDIQ is no longer allowed.”
However, this appears to contradict Section L of the latest draft RFP that still states “for joint ventures (JV), the work of any JV member may be utilized” as a work sample under Category 1. It remains to be seen what requirements and limitations AAMAC will have on teaming.
Cost and/or price
Related sections
