OPM taps five firms for investigations support

Five companies have won prime contracts to provide background investigations support for federal agencies through blanket purchase agreements awarded by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency has announced.

The companies are ManTech International Corp., Fairfax, Va.; CACI International Inc., Arlington, Va.; Kroll Inc., New York; OmniPlex World Services Corp., Chantilly, Va.; and Systems Application and Technologies Inc., Landover, Md.

Under the agreements, the companies will conduct security clearance background investigations for federal agencies, including the departments of Defense, Energy and Homeland Security.

The contract likely will have a potential value to ManTech of $50 million to $100 million annually, the company said in a separate announcement.

The multiple blanket purchase agreements for federal background investigation services are expected to help alleviate the backlog of pending investigations and establish a long-term plan to boost the nation's investigative capacity, OPM said.

The procurement could generate as many as 2,000 new jobs over the next three years.

Between the new contracts and existing investigative resources, OPM will increase the national capacity to 8,000 field investigators.

A February 2004 Government Accountability Office report on personnel security clearances estimated that about 8,000 full-time equivalent investigative personnel would be needed to handle the approximately 2 million investigation requests that OPM receives each year and help eliminate investigative backlogs of between 300,000 and 500,000 cases.