Leidos fights on for lost TSA contract
By
Nick Wakeman
Leidos has turned to the Government Accountability Office in a bid to keep an incumbent contract worth $578 million to support screening and other security equipment.
Leidos isn’t about to take losing an incumbent contract lightly.
They filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office on Oct. 17 after losing a competition to Peraton to maintain checkpoint equipment at airports. And a supplemental protest followed 10 days later.
The firm-fixed price contract is worth $578.1 million over five years.
Leidos has supplied those services to the Transportation Security Administration since 2013 when the company won a five-year, $442.5 million contract.
The contract includes integrated logistics, testing, deploying and maintaining the check point equipment that monitors passengers and baggage for explosives, weapons and other contraband.
Leidos also operates the TSA Service Response Center to manage logistics support. The work covers checkpoints at 448 airports and more than 11,000 pieces of equipment.
Leidos filed its supplemental protest on Oct. 27. The company declines to comment on protests.
TSA work is an important line of business for Leidos. In 2015, it won a $450 million contract to support the deployment of transportation security equipment.
Earlier this year, it won a $45 million TSA contract to provide hazardous materials management and disposal services at more than 440 airport screening checkpoints. That contract was a recompete of another contract first won in 2012.
The company describes its relationship with TSA as “longstanding.”
Peraton is no slouch at TSA either. The company has contracts to support more than 650 TSA sites with communications infrastructure. It works with the State Department on U.S. entry and exit systems and provides DHS with logistics and supply chain management.
The company also holds the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure contract, which puts Peraton at nearly every location where TSA has a presence.
Although the name and brand of Peraton is new to the market, the company has deep roots in the federal space. It was created from the spin-out of the Harris IT services business earlier this year.
If the new TSA award holds, this will be a significant takeaway for Peraton and their CEO Stu Shea. It gets the newly-independent company heading in a good direction and shows that it can expand its footprint with existing customers.
It also will be a bit of a sweet victory for Shea. He was an executive at Science Applications International Corp. and helped orchestrate the 2013 split of SAIC into two companies, one of them being Leidos.
Shea was named the chief operating officer of Leidos but left the company in 2014. He had been considered a contender to become CEO before his resignation. At the time, Leidos was struggling to grow its business. Shea’s departure was described as a “mutual decision” of CEO John Jumper, the board and Shea.