Lockheed wins $700 million EPA deal

Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency is the latest federal agency to test the performance-based contracting waters.

On January 8, the EPA awarded its Information Technology Solutions — -Environmental Systems Engineering (ITS-ESE) contract -- worth almost $700 million, to Lockheed Martin Services Inc.

Lockheed Martin will provide environmental, administrative and research systems engineering services to the EPA, along with its state and industrial partners, according to Diane Esanu, EPA's senior communications officer.

The ITS-ESE contract has a specific value of $699,337,192, with a base period of five years. Option periods may extend the total length of service up to nine years.

Aside from receiving the benefits of performance-based contracting, a key outcome will be to align the environmental information systems of the EPA with the enterprise architectures of federal and state partners, according to Esanu.

The systems engineering services contract includes systems development, maintenance and operations, application security, IT architecture support, data management, statistical services, geographic information systems, high-performance computing and visualization, scientific application and computational scientific support.

Lockheed Martin officials plan to establish a National Environmental Information and Systems Engineering Center in Arlington, Va., to serve as headquarters for the program. Four satellite centers will be located in Raleigh, N.C.; Richland, Wash.; Stennis Space Center, Miss.; and Las Vegas, Nev.

The transition to new services available from Lockheed is expected to conclude by March 31, according to Esanu.