Geospatial services provider Thermopylae Sciences & Technology said it has been awarded a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) blanket purpose agreement (BPA) that could be worth $98 million for Geospatial Technical Support Services (GTSS).
Thermopylae, along with three other businesses, was awarded via competitive bid a one-year base period with up to four options years, according to a company statement. Under this BPA, Thermopylae will provide information technology (IT) support to geospatial programs across DHS. BPAs eliminate contracting and open market costs such as the search for sources, the need to prepare solicitations and the requirement to synopsize the acquisition, according to the General Services Administration (GSA).
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Under the terms of this BPA, Thermopylae will be responsible for providing program and project management, technical planning, engineering and implementation, analytics and processing, enterprise and technical architecture, data processing and management and operations and maintenance. Thermopylae’s core expertise is in geospatial technologies, Thermopylae President A.J. Clark told Defense Daily yesterday.
GTSS supports programs throughout DHS with geospatial and common operating picture technology requirements. Geospatial technology helps a variety of DHS missions that rely on location-based technologies including emergency management of natural and manmade disasters, planning for special security events, support of border security and immigration and customs enforcement among others. Clark said Thermopylae will provide services revolving around things like a common operating picture for geovisualization or bringing together geospatial pools in a browser-based environment.
Clark said the company has not received any task orders, but will likely receive more information about task orders following a November meeting with DHS. Smith said this is the first time Thermopylae has been selected to provide services to DHS as the company has been engaging with the agency for almost 18 months.
“We’re really excited about it, particularly from a business perspective because it was one of our strategic areas to grow into this year,” Clark said. “We did a lot of work with the Defense Department and the intelligence community, but didn’t have a whole lot of DHS, so this is exciting for us.”
Thermopylae has received a number of DoD contracts involving geo-acquisition of technology, including Google [GOOG] technology, of which Thermopylae has a close relationship as a Premier Google Enterprise Partner. Clark said a Premier Google Enterprise Partner receives early product access before public release, allowing the company to participate in the “trusted tester” program to experiment with how they can more effectively meet their end customer’s needs. Clark said it also means premier partners interact frequently with the Google engineering team and that they have a highly trained group of engineers that have been certified on the Google products they represent.
Thermopylae has also done business with the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), various DoD agencies and the private sector. Clark said Thermopylae has about 120 employees with 80 based in Arlington, Va., and the rest spread among Dallas, Miami and the San Francisco Bay area.