Center awards $480 million engineering support contract

HANSCOM AFB, MASS. - -- The U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Center has awarded a contract worth a total ceiling value of $480 million for Advisory and Assistance Services (A&AS) to an industry team led by Jacobs Technologies Inc. 

The contract will provide Engineering and Technology Acquisition Support Services, referred to as ETASS, for up to the next three years. The contract carries a one-year initial term and two one-year options. 

"We expect ETASS to instill a consistent use of uniform engineering standards and procedures across ESC," said the center's director of Engineering, Dr. James Cunningham. "This will result in greater standardization of processes across all ESC programs. We also expect the team to provide credible advice in assessing ESC's prime development contractors' process compliance, technical progress, and product performance." 

These services will provide a broad range of engineering acquisition support, including, but not limited to: engineering services, engineering support, technical support, provisioning and logistics support, modeling and simulation, configuration and data management, architectural support, text and evaluation, security engineering and certification, capability based planning , commercial off-the-shelf integration, support, integration master plans, integration scheduling, and technical reviews in support of various research, development and production activities. 

The contract work will be performed through 16 individual task orders. The contractor team has been awarded a post award task order, and seven additional individual task orders will be awarded soon; following that, the center plans to award the remaining eight task orders over the next two months. 

ETASS is the third component of a three-part effort to replace the current vehicle used to provide A&AS support, the $1.4 billion Information Technology Services Program (ITSP) II, which currently constitutes in excess of 40 percent of the ESC work force. ITSP II is set to expire June 30. The first component, the four-year, $88 million Specialized Cost Services, was awarded in October 2006. The second component, the $800 million, five-year Professional Acquisition Support Services contract, known as PASS, was awarded last month. 

"This award signifies the near-completion of the center's transition from ITSP to this comprehensive new approach for delivering support services to ESC," said the center's director of Contracted Support Management, Linda Jean. "However, there is still a lot work to be done, as we work to award all the individual task orders and oversee the transition of labor resources." 

To cover support throughout the transition, ESC is putting in place temporary "bridge" support by awarding upwards of 100 short-term task orders to the existing ITSP II incumbents. This is necessary to ensure continued contracted support beginning July 1 and ending with the transitions to PASS and ETASS, later this year.


CONTACT: Chuck Paone, (781) 377-5078, charles.paone@hanscom.af.mil