The consolidation of IT and professional support services at Sandia National Laboratories looks to be a big win for government IT specialist Global Analytic IT Services. The Alexandria, Va., services company just inked a five-year deal worth $152 million.
The contract calls for GAITS to handle all of Sandia’s IT systems in Albuquerque, Carlsbad, N.M., and Livermore, Calif. The job will keep more than 200 GAITS IT folks engaged for the duration of the contract, according to a company statement.
The contract covers IT architecture, applications development, processes management and comprehensive support of all of Sandia’s network and computing infrastructure. Sandia, which itself is a public-sector services effort (the place is run by Lockheed Martin for the Department of Energy), is looking to GAITS to consolidate several separate IT contracts across its organization, according to Fred Romo, Sandia’s senior contracting representative.
Sandia has pared down 17 IT and professional services agreements to just three in recent weeks. The labs recently announced the new Sandia Staffing Alliance LLC — a partnership between WESTECH and Gram Inc. — that will provide 500 professional service staff. Those support workers will be employed by LMATA Government Services LLC, a newly formed combo of current staff providers L&M Technologies and ATA Services Inc.
In other government contract news, Science Applications International Corporation said today that it won a $42 million, three-year deal to support the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency‘s Deep Green program. Part war video game, part computer-driven modeling and simulation system, DARPA’s Deep Green is an ongoing effort to give military commanders a way to predict the outcomes of battle plans and adjust them in real-time.
Under the contract with DARPA, SAIC will handle design, development and integration of Deep Green systems. Some of the cooler aspects of the project call for SAIC engineers to create computer interfaces for soldiers and build a synthetic battlefield where decisions can be played out and analyzed.