A year after canceling its $2 billion training contract, the Office of Personnel Management is getting closer to finalizing what that new procurement vehicle will look like.

The General Services Administration is reviewing more than 200 responses to a request for information that closed in January as it builds toward the release of a draft request for proposals in March.

Jim Ghiloni, program director for GSA’s professional services program management office, said the Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS) contract will be part of the human capital category management initiative, which is being led by OPM.

The Office of Management and Budget estimated agencies spend about $3.6 billion a year on human capital services such as training, human resources services and specialized educational services.

Ghiloni said generally speaking throughout the RFI vendors asked a lot of questions about which North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code the contract will come under, the key service areas, labor categories, past performance and the evaluation criteria.

“We are reviewing all of that as we anticipated we’d need to do and the results of that effort will appear in the draft RFP,” Ghiloni said in an interview with Federal News Radio. “We expect the final RFP to be out in May, and get these contracts awarded by the end of the calendar year. We are still on schedule right now.”

GSA is considering two HCaTS vehicles, one unrestricted and one only for small businesses.

GSA and OPM are teaming up on HCaTS after OPM’s initial attempt to replace the Training and Management Assistance (TMA) contract that failed in February 2014.

TMA, which has helped agencies meet human capital requirements for much of the last 25 years, remains in effect through 2017.

Ghiloni said HCaTS is organized around five broad categories:

• Training and development services
• Human capital strategy services
• Human resources and human resource management temporary services
• Information technology support of human resources systems
• Organizational performance improvement

Ghiloni said the RFI provided significant feedback on those five areas, and GSA will reflect those improvements in the draft and eventually final RFPs.

Along with HCaTS, Ghiloni is running the OASIS professional services governmentwide acquisition contract.

He said the first task order awards should happen in a matter of weeks as agencies including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Customs and Border Protection, Interior Department and the Agriculture Department have all issued RFQs against the contract.

Ghiloni said the Air Force, which signed an agreement with GSA in December 2013 to spend at least $500 million on the contract in the first 18 months, is responsible for almost half of all RFQs so far.

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