Days after nabbing a $4.5 billion winner-take-all contract to support the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA], General Dynamics’ [GD] Information Technology business unit this week opened a new geospatial innovation center in St. Louis, where NGA has a significant presence.
“St. Louis is a rapidly growing center for geospatial technology, and our new space strengthens and grows our presence in the region and long-term investment to the community,” Ben Buckley, vice president for geospatial services and solutions at GDIT, said in a statement. “We see a tremendous opportunity here, not only for GDIT and our customers but also for the larger community, to benefit from the growth of the geospatial sector.”
Last week, NGA awarded GDIT a potential five-year, $4.5 billion contract for IT support under the User Facing and Data Center Services (UDS). The contract consolidates work that GD and Leidos [LDOS] currently do under separate contracts.
NGA’s nearly $1 billion contract with Leidos was awarded in 2017 for the Information Technology Enterprise Managed Services (ITEMS) User Facing Services and GD the same year won the ITEMS Data Center Services contract. The award value to GD wasn’t disclosed then because it was classified.
GDIT’s work under the new UDS contract will be formed at NGA sites in Springfield, Va., St. Louis, and Arnold, Mo.
GD said its new facility features GDIT’s Deepsky environment that allows teams to collaborate and develop software prototypes and solutions in support of the geospatial mission around computing, cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning with partners in academia, industry and technology.
The facility is located within the Cortex Innovation Community in St. Louis, a 200 acre urban innovation hub.