Indus wins $174M IT services pact

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has awarded Indus Corp. a performance-based contract valued at $174 million over 10 years for information technology services.

Indus, a minority-owned IT and Web solutions provider based in Vienna, Va., will help develop Internet-based data visualization tools and provide secure access to transportation databases.

The company, working at FHWA headquarters and field locations, also will provide other IT services, including application software management, document management, help-desk services, videoconferencing and local-area network support.

"This is our largest contract," said Shivram Krishnan, president and chief executive officer of Indus. "It's the scale, not the scope, that has changed."

Aside from videoconferencing, "Indus has provided all the other services to a variety of federal organizations over the years," Krishnan said.

The contract has a two-year base with four two-year award terms. FHWA will evaluate Indus every four months and will consider the company for each additional segment only if it earns a sustained superior evaluation.

"We are very comfortable working in a performance-based contract environment," he said. Indus has made such arrangements with the Federal Railroad Administration and NASA.

"Multiyear contracts that include periodic performance evaluation are among the most effective contract instruments we have at our disposal," Mary Peters, FHWA administrator, said in a May 30 news release.

The agency expects to save as much as $2 million a year and increase efficiency by consolidating IT services into one contract with one vendor.

"We had IT services being procured under many arrangements," said Rick Murray, a contracting officer in FHWA's Office of Acquisition Management. "Since all the types of IT are starting to merge — it's hard to tell where one stops and the other starts — we decided to take a more holistic approach."

Previously, Signal Corp., Columbia Services Group Inc. and York Telecom Corp. handled most of the IT work at the agency, Murray said.

Indus has selected Signal as its lead subcontractor. Other team members include York Telecom, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Centech Group Inc. Working with Signal and York Telecom, in particular, has helped ease the transition, Krishnan said.

Indus was also recently awarded a $55 million services contract in support of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

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Roadside assistance

Indus Corp.'s contract with the Federal Highway Administration for information technology services includes the following core areas:

* Enterprise architecture.

* Application database support.

* Application software management.

* Document management.

* Help-desk and local-area network support.

* IT security.

* Mainframe support.

* Videoconferencing.

* Web support.