Navy adds 914 firms to Seaport-e

That’s not a typo. The Navy really did add another 914 companies to the Seaport-e contract.

By my calculation, that brings the total to 2,535 providing services across 22 functional areas.

I have to admit: I know next to nothing about Seaport-e, other than that it seems every company in the market holds the contract.

According to Deltek’s market research data, an amazing $44.2 billion in task orders have gone through the contract since it was first awarded in 2000.

Like the General Services Administration schedules program, Seaport-e has a rolling admissions process, so it seems that every year, another batch of companies are added. The contracts have a five-year base and two five-year options. It has become a must-have kind of vehicle if you want to do business with the Navy.

Again, looking at Deltek’s data, the top contractor is John Hopkins University, with 6,897 task orders worth $4.4 billion. That’s just over 10 percent. Eleven companies have pulled in more than $1 billion in task orders. No. 2 is SAIC with $3.1 billion in task orders, or 7.1 percent.

Interestingly, once you get past the first 18 companies, no contractor has more than 1 percent of the total business, but with such a high volume of work, a less than 1 percent share can still equal hundreds of millions of dollars in task orders. With 0.92 percent of the task orders, Wyle still captured $405 million in work.

But at the bottom of the list, there are scores of companies with task orders in the single digits. I stopped counting at 200.

As I said, I know very little about the contract, but the volume of work, the number of companies and the relatively quiet nature of the contract make me think it must be a success.

I occasionally hear of bid protests of individual task orders, but that’s about it.

So, I wonder, is Seaport-e a success story? Let me know what you think.

As for the winners in this latest round, here’s the link to the defense site listing them: http://www.defense.gov/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=5168