Big-ticket awards highlight first quarter contract activity

During the first three months of 2020, Washington Technology reported on over 50 contract awards, ranging from one $50 billion vehicle with 89 winners to an $11 million single-award contract.

The 54 contracts we covered have been for a wide range of IT, professional services and telecommunications work. Eight of the 54 were valued at over $1 billion and other six clocked in at more than $900 million.

But beyond the numbers, there were several notable awards in the last three months.

Topping that list is the $7.7 billion Navy NGEN network services contract captured by Leidos. That contract is of course under protest by both the incumbent Perspecta and another challenger in General Dynamics IT. Decisions on those protests aren’t expected until June.

Leidos did get a second major contract cleared through the protest process when GAO ruled in its favor over a protest by GDIT for the $6.5 billion DISA GSM-O II contract to manage the Defense Department’s global information grid. That decision came in April, so we aren’t counting that as part of this first quarter roundup of awards.

The big prize in the first quarter was the $50 billion OASIS on-ramp, where the General Services Administration added 82 small businesses to that vehicle. More on ramp awards are expected in the coming months.

Of the 54 awards, 24 were made by civilian agencies and the other 30 were by defense agencies and the military services.

The OASIS on-ramp is the biggest award by a civilian agency but as a government-wide vehicle, it is heavily used by defense buyers to procure wide range of professional services.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services awarded a $5 billion vehicle to 20 companies for data and research services.

What are agencies buying? High on the list is professional services and IT support. But there also are large, very focused contracts.

For example, an SAIC-Amentum joint venture retained their work supporting the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture efforts under a $1.3 billion contract.

L3Harris Technologies won a $1 billion contract known as MOSSAIC to support Space Force’s situational awareness capabilities.

The 54 contract awards were covered during January, February and March had an aggregate ceiling of $95.7 billion. From that, $70.9 billion went to 13 multiple-award contracts on the list. Let that sink in for a minute and it reinforces how critical these large multiple-award contracts to the market.

Of course, $50 billion of the total ceiling value was from one contract: OASIS.

You can do your own analysis using our 2020 Contract Award database, which is exclusive for Washington Technology Insider members. You can sort the database by date, company, agency or contract value.