The Navy identified two more companies on Thursday that are now eligible to compete for the production of its ship-based information technology system known as CANES, and awarded each, CGI Federal and DRS Laurel Technologies, a contract that allows them to provide at least one system.
The two companies will join Northrop Grumman [NOC], General Dynamics [GD], BAE Systems, Global Technical Systems and Serco, the five companies originally awarded contracts in August for the full production of the Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise System. Proposals by CGI and DRS were at the time rejected.
But the Navy’s decision to now add the two firms came after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in December upheld a protest by CGI over being excluded from the original group.
Rather than hold a new competition, as is common with GAO-affirmed protests, the Navy instead elected to add the two firms to the mix, even though the protest lodged by DRS was rebuffed by the GAO.
“The Navy decided it was in the best interest of the CANES program to include CGI Federal, Inc., and DRS Laurel Technologies into the competition pool for future unit delivery task orders following the Dec. 11, 2014 GAO protest decision,” Steven Davis, a spokesman for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), said Thursday.
CANES is designed to eliminate multiple legacy information technology systems by effectively merging stand-alone networks for command, control, computers, communications, and intelligence (C4I) systems into a common, interoperable shipboard computing environment.
Under the award, each firm will produce one CANES unit for a destroyer. Going forward, SPAWAR plans to compete the CANES production through task order competitions to procure the system in batches. The idea is to promote continuous competition and drive down cost throughout the full production run.
The total value of the work over an eight-year period is estimated in the award at $2.5 billion. The Navy plans to install CANES on 180 ships and at a handful of on-shore sites.
Northrop Grumman has been producing CANES in low-rate production after winning the contract a few years ago, but the Navy owns Northrop Grumman’s design, a condition the company had to accept to win the low-rate production contract.