NOAA moves closer to wrapping up $3B 'ProTech' services awards

Now open again after five weeks of being shut down, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has unveiled 24 awardees on the “Oceans” track of a potential $3 billion contract for professional and technical services to support NOAA’s environmental intelligence gathering mission.

NOAA technically awarded this piece of its “ProTech” contract vehicle on Dec. 21, but that coincided with the start of the five-week partial government shutdown that affected the agency and others in the Commerce Department. An award notice was posted to FedBizOpps Monday in conjunction with NOAA re-opening for business.

ProTech is a mandatory strategic sourcing initiative of NOAA to consolidate those types of services into a single vehicle and develop an enduring base of partners in industry. Other Commerce agencies can use the contract.

The contract is broken up into four tracks: Oceans, Satellite, Fisheries and Weather. NOAA in August canceled what was the fifth track for enterprise services and consolidated those requirements into other contract vehicles. All pieces except for Weather have been awarded.

Oceans track awardees will work with NOAA’s National Ocean Service to collect and manage scientific data, create geospatial maps of coastal areas and support community outreach efforts.

Those winners are:

• Battelle
• BMT Designers & Planners
• Cardinal Point Captains
• CDI Marine
• COLSA
• Consolidated Safety Services
• DHI Water and Environment
• Earth Resources Technology
• ECS Federal
• Freestone Environmental Services
• Integrated Systems Solutions
• JHT Inc.
• Lynker Technologies
• Lynne Carbone & Associates
• Maden Technologies
• NewFields Government Services
• Oasis Systems
• PAE
• Research Planning
• Science Technology
• SMRC
• Spatial Front
• TechGlobal
• The Baldwin Group

NOAA expects to make awards for the Weather piece by the summer of this calendar year, according to the agency’s most recent quarterly report on the vehicle. Those winners will focus on weather data collection and monitoring, plus other scientific services as needed to support the National Weather Service.

The Fisheries track opened for business late last year to 17 companies for support to NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. Those awardees will bid for work to help NOAA Fisheries in its mission of protecting seafood resources and helping create sustainable ecosystems.

NOAA also commenced work on the Environmental piece in mid-2017 for 23 companies to help National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service in its mission to link users with data on weather, climate and oceanic events.