Court ruling caps stellar 2020 of contract wins for Leidos
By
Nick Wakeman
With the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruling in its favor, Leidos can put a bow on its 2020 of big contract wins with the $7.7 billion Navy NGEN award and six others north of $1 billion now official.
The fight for the $7.7 billion Navy NGEN network services contract appears to have ended Thursday with Leidos as the winner, which means the company can look back on a remarkable year for itself on the business development front.
NGEN, which provides the IT backbone for the Navy and Marine Corps, had been held by Perspecta since 2000 when it was first won by EDS Corp., a legacy company of Perspecta’s.
NGEN is Leidos’ biggest win of the year but isn't the only major contract award. The company has captured seven contracts in the last 12 months with values ranging from just shy of $1 billion to NGEN’s $7.7 billion.
In aggregate, those seven wins represent $21.7 billion in contract awards. An eighth award worth $1 billion is still wrapped up in a protest by the incumbent.
Most of the wins were recompetes, including the $4 billion Energy Department to manage the Hanford site and the $6.5 billion Defense Information Systems Agency contract to continue managing the Defense Information Network and the Global Information Grid under the Global Solutions Management Operations II contract known as GSM-O II.
But NGEN was a takeaway from Perspecta, as was a $980 million Customs and Border Protection contract was previously held by Northrop Grumman.
Three other big wins for Leidos are a case of defending its own turf as the incumbent -- the $1.7 billion Federal Aviation Systems Integration contract, the $1 billion FAA Flight Services contract and an $850 million Justice Department support contract.
Still pending is the $990 million Army Reserve Health Readiness Program III. Leidos took that from Logistics Health, which has since protested the award. A decision from the Government Accountability Office is expected Jan. 27.
According to Deltek, the Army has awarded a bridge contract to Logistics Health to continue its support through November 2021.
This run of wins also doesn’t include the contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars that Leidos has won.
Quite a year for anyone and then layer on top of that the $1 billion acquisition of L3Harris’ airport security business and the $1.65 billion purchase of Dynetics, a provider of high-end technical services and hardware in areas such as hypersonics, space and weapons systems.
It’s the kind of year that makes one take a deep breath, but I wouldn’t expect Leidos to sit back and relax.
In a market as competitive and dynamic as the government market, resting means losing.