GDIT builds team to chase $1B opportunity

General Dynamics’ IT services segment is taking the added weight of CSRA in tow and throwing it toward an almost $1 billion consolidated Army contract to run a complex security system in overseas locations, a GDIT executive has confirmed to WT.

But GDIT is not only aiming to bring the combination of itself and CSRA to the table in pursuit of the “Integrated Base Defense–Sustainment Support” task order contract. Raytheon and Leidos are also part of the fold as large business partners for this program focused on force protection for soldiers.

This procurement also “really has a high priority toward supply chain,” said Karl Tappert, vice president of Army C4ISR systems for GDIT. “There is not an area where these systems are being deployed and being sustained that we don’t already have a supply chain feeding (field service representatives) that are providing maintenance in those areas today.

“Bringing that footprint, that experience and already being located in areas where these systems are deployed will bring great capability and great opportunity to the effort for the government,” Tappert told me.

The potential five-year, $982 million IBD-SS contract is a bulked-up recompete that consolidates roughly 20 different task orders that include CSRA as an incumbent. Deltek data also lists Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI International, Huntington Ingalls Industries, ManTech International, Radiance Technologies, Raytheon, Science Applications International Corp. and STS International as other incumbents of those task orders.

Whoever wins this single-award contract will sustain a technology environment that includes all types of security equipment such as radars, cameras, night-vision sensors, infrared gravity sensors, metal detectors and x-ray systems. The awardee will also be responsible for repairs, changes and upgrades to the systems if and as needed.

“Most of the systems that are coming together in this opportunity are quick reaction capabilities,” Tappert said. “It’s all coming together into one contract to give the government the efficiencies they’re looking for, as well as the transparency into all of their different systems.”

The Army’s bringing together of these various IT hardware and service requirements into a single buy is one more anecdotal example of contract consolidation. That sees agencies combine different services under larger procurements that often have ceilings of $500 million or more over five-to-10 years.

What that trend means for industry is that companies are being more selective in how to approach these types of opportunities, Tappert said. That also puts the onus on industry to push new technologies and other solutions into the customer environment on a quicker turn, he added.

“If we can bring that (technology) to them in these types of consolidations, then there’s going to be cost savings but then they’re also getting the very best that we have to offer, Tappert said. “They’re getting access to that type of technology that only industry can bring them.”