SAIC increases NASA portfolio with $1.3B NICS win

NASA has selected Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of McLean, Va., for its NASA Integrated Communications Services contract (NICS). The base award of the contract is $340 million with a potential of $1.3 billion if all options are exercised.

The contract is a follow-on for other NASA contracts held by SAIC, including the Unified NASA Information Technology Services (UNITeS) contract that was extended by NASA in February with a base of $36 million and potential of $62 million.

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SAIC will provide managerial and technical expertise to NASA's office of the CIO for corporate and mission communications, including local area network connectivity (LAN) to all of NASA’s centers spread across the country.

The NICS contract is part of the agency’s I3P initiative – NASA Information Technology Infrastructure Integration Program. I3P focuses on sourcing of various IT work functions to provide specific corporate and mission capabilities and includes end-user services, NASA data centers, Web services and communications services. NASA has a variety of core IT contracts, including ACES – Agency Consolidated End-User Services – which was awarded to Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services in late-December 2010.

The NICS contract is a cost-plus-award-fee/incentive-fee contract with an indefinite IDIQ (indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity) feature. SAIC was awarded a purchase order by NASA for phase-in activities to transition from existing contracts to NICS that will last until May 31.

SAIC Corp., of McLean, Va., ranks No. 5 on Washington Technology’s 2010 Top 100 list of the largest federal government contractors.