Accenture, Booz Allen lead Navy picks for Sea Enterprise project

Four companies won slots as prime contractors this month to compete for nearly $200 million in contract opportunities to refine and improve business processes common to the various Navy components and commands.The winners of the Navy's Sea Enterprise contracts for business process transformation are Accenture National Security Services of Reston, Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, AMSEC of Virginia Beach and IBM Federal of Fairfax. The companies will support the Navy's director of Material Readiness and Logistics. Accenture's award is worth $57 million, AMSEC's $44 million, Booz Allen's $48 million and IBM's $47 million, the Defense Department said. Sea Enterprise is the Navy's initiative for business process transformation to improve readiness, effectiveness and availability of forces through changes to key business processes?establishing requirements to meet goals and objectives and then putting in place processes and technologies to measure outcomes.An overarching goal of the initiative is to free up additional financial resources to invest in its future fleet, a process known as recapitalization. The contracts were awarded by Fleet and Industrial Supply Center in Norfolk. Ninety-five percent of the work will be performed in the Washington metropolitan area and the remaining five percent at other Navy locations in the continental United States, the department said. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracting structure used for the project allows the Navy to issue specific tasks for which the companies compete against each other. "The Navy wants to continue to enable competition and have flexibility," said Minh Le, a senior executive in Accenture's defense practice. "A lot of these companies have been working with the Navy for many years."Accenture performed 27 tasks as the incumbent and single prime contractor for the Sea Enterprise Business Transformation Program Consulting Services contract awarded in 2004, Le said.On the previous contract, he said, Accenture helped the Navy improve functions common to its various commands, such as manpower and personnel training, logistics, installations management and information technology. "People should not only think of the Navy just as having weapons platforms but also as a business that needs processes, performance measures and systems to manage large capital assets and resources just like any commercial entity," said Le.