NCI builds on legacy with $89M Army win

NCI Information Systems has been tapped to outfit the IT infrastructure for the Army Intelligence and Security Command’s new headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

The $89 million job will last two years and includes construction of the largest auditorium in the D.C.-area outside of Pentagon.

“We have a 30-year legacy with INSCOM,” NCI CEO Paul Dillahay said. “This is their new headquarters building and it has about 190,000 square-feet.”

Close to 1,400 people will use the facility and NCI is doing all of the infrastructure to enable IT operations as well as audio and video capabilities.

The auditorium includes a floor to ceiling bank of 200 television that will be used for briefings and tracking of operations.

NCI has done similar work for the Army Futures Command under a contract it won in 2019.

“This is legacy work for us that we’ve done for a long time,” said Chuck Hicks, chief operating officer and chief financial officer for NCI.

INSCOM's auditorium is a centerpiece of the contract because of the need for collaboration as the command monitors operations and emerging threats.

“They can bring a large number of people together for briefings and they have war rooms adjacent to it so they can break up and look at things they are being briefed on,” Hicks said. “I’m sure it’ll get utilized in many different ways for many different purposes.”

NCI differentiated itself from its competitors because it had people with the right skills and the right high level security clearances.

“What brought the competition size down was you had to have the certifications and you had to have the people with these types of skills,” Hicks said.

The company will provide all personnel, equipment, supplies, transportation, tools, supervision and other necessary services to perform IT and AV systems engineering, procurement, installation, testing and turnover.

Another interesting aspect of this contract is that the release of the solicitation came out after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and its social distancing requirements, Dillahay said. Luckily, for NCI, it had already begun bringing some people back into the office as the heavy proposal work began. Also, the team leading this effort is based out of the Fort Huachuca area of Arizona.

“We’ve gotten very comfortable working with them, both traveling into headquarters and doing it remotely,” Dillahay said. “In this case, we didn’t have to change a thing.”

The project is part of INSCOM’s effort to consolidate its operations into a single office building, rather than being scattered around different buildings at Fort Belvoir.

“As they have grown over the years, they’ve become dispersed and this will bring them back to being in one location,” he said.

While at $89 million, the contract is not NCI’s biggest contract overall, but its stature grows because it is only two years.

“It is a nice size win for any company but a lot of times the awards we see are five years, so this is actually more impactful,” Dillahay said. ‘There are lots of $90 million jobs, but not a lot are just two-year duration.”