Agency outsources imaging and mapping duties via $600 million omnibus project
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The National Imagery and Mapping Agency plans to do away with much of its in-house mapping and imagery work, handing it over to vendors through new task order contracts. NIMA recently awarded contracts to 15 vendors under its $600 million Omnibus Geospatial Information and Imagery Intelligence Solicitation program. The vendors will get access to national reconnaissance information to create the maps for customers throughout government.
The National Imagery and Mapping Agency plans to do away with much of its in-house
mapping and imagery work, handing it over to vendors through new task order contracts.
NIMA recently awarded contracts to 15 vendors under its $600 million Omnibus Geospatial
Information and Imagery Intelligence Solicitation program. The vendors will get access to
national reconnaissance information to create the maps for customers throughout
government.
Vendors, including Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville,
Ala., Raytheon Co. and SAIC, will compete for task orders ranging in value from $3,000 to
$30 million.
NIMA has created a world-class geospatial industry with this contract
vehicle, said Clay Ancell, director of NIMAs Commercial Office. The
money and number of firms that are involved is big, and the end result is going to be a
major increase in capacity in doing this kind of work.
The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts each have a base year and four
option years. They cover production services in three areas: surveying, mapping and
charting, and imagery intelligence and photogrammetric services.
Through the contracts, NIMA expects it will be more responsive in meeting the
requirements of its Defense Department and civilian agency customers, NIMA officials said.
Historically, we had about 67 separate entity contracts for the different product
types required by the services, Ancell said. Our strategy is to move toward
production services that are more flexible than the one-product specification contracts we
used to have. With the omnibus contracts, the task orders define the
deliverables.