The popular vote for the Wash100 continues this week! Turn out has been fantastic since the Wash100 popular vote polls opened on January 25^th. Please visit the Wash100 voting page to place your ten votes for the executives that you believe will have the greatest influence on the government contracting landscape over the course of the next year.

The current top five executives are:

This week we’re going to take a look at some of the significant contract activity that has taken place this month. Recent high-value contracts include:

• Jacobs Engineering Group landing a $778M USSOCOM IT support contract
• Systems Made Simple, a Leidos subsidiary, winning a potential $472M VA IT modernization support order
• Lockheed Martin receiving a $1.5B modification on a Navy advance acquisition contract for F-35 air systems
• General Dynamics Electric Boat winning a $696M contract modification for submarine materials
• URS Federal Services receiving a $961 USAF contract for remotely piloted aircraft
• Raytheon and Palantir Technologies landing a $876M ground intel system support contract

On March 14^th Jacobs Engineering Group announced that it had received a potential five-year, $778 million contract from U.S. Special Operations Command to provide information technology enterprise operations and maintenance support services. Jacobs will supply global network operations, ender user and common device support, enterprise configuration and architecture, license and asset management support for the Special Operations Forces Information Environment. Darren Kraabel, SVP for aerospace and technology at Jacobs, noted that the company has supported USSOCOM intelligence operations for the past twenty years and is looking forward to broadening its mission support to USSOCOM via the contract.

Systems Made Simple, a Leidos subsidiary, announced on March 14 that it had received a potential four-year, $472 million task order to assist the Department of Veterans Affairs’ IT systems modernization efforts. The company will carry out data center operations, security, architecture, applications management, service desk and command center support under theInfrastructure Operations Services Support task order. Jerry Hogge, SVP of Leidos’ military and veterans’ health solutions business unit, said that the company’s IT personnel will be maintaining system operations to support availability for the VA’s data center applications and services. The Infrastructure Operations Services Support task order is the next phase of the VA’s IT modernization effort, Leidos noted.

On March 13^th, Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics business unit received a potential $1.46 billion modification under a U.S. Navy advance acquisition contract for the low-rate initial production of F-35 air systems. The contract modification funds long-lead material and parts required for manufacturing 145 lot 13 aircraft for the U.S. armed forces, non-DoD participants and foreign military sales customers. The DoD noted that Lockheed Martin will obtain the necessary items to build 69 lot 14 aircraft for non-DoD and FMS customers.

On March 12^th, the Department of Defense announced that it had awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat a $696.2 million contract modification for additional long-lead time materials required to build four Virginia-class submarines. The contract modification will fund purchase of steam and electric plant components, main propulsion systems, ship service turbine generators and assorted hull, mechanical and electrical parts for the four submarines. Electric Boat is expected to begin construction on the submarines in FY 2019.

The DoD announced on March 9^th that it had awarded AECOM’s URS Federal Servicesbusiness a potential $961 million contract to support the U.S. Air Force in operating and maintaining three remotely piloted aircraft variants. Under the contract, URS will be responsible for providing organizational-level maintenance support for the USAF’s MQ-9 Reaper, MQ-1 Predator and RQ-4 Global Hawk platforms. The contract also calls for support for MQ-1 and MQ-9 pilot and sensor operators in order to sustain combat and training readiness.

On March 8^th, the DoD announced that Raytheon and Palantir Technologies had won spots on apotential ten-year, $876 million contract to assist the U.S. Army in meeting technology requirements for the service branch’s Distributed Common Ground System. The DCGS-Army Capability Drop 1 program mandates that an integrated hardware and software platform be designed to support training, security, usability, interoperability and data management functions. The DCGS is described as a system-of-systems intended to assist commanders in gathering and disseminating intelligence data to warfighters in real time. Work is expected to conclude by March 2028.