The U.S. Air Force awarded five firms a partial small business set-aside competition for cybersecurity and information systems technical area tasks with the firms set to compete for orders of $3.5 million and below each with a combined total of $5 billion, the Air Force said Oct. 8.

The five companies awarded the competition are Barbaricum, LLC; Baum, Romstedt Technology Research Corp.; Data Systems Analysts Inc.; Professional Project Services Inc. (Pro2Serve); SMS Data Products Group Inc.; and Solers Inc.

The Air Force said the companies will share the maximum $5 billion cost-plus-fixed-free, firm-fixed price, multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract with a not yet awarded multi-award open and full competition pool.

The contract delivers research, development, test, and evaluation efforts for technical tasks within focus areas including software analysis, information assurance, knowledge management and information sharing, and modeling and simulation.

Contract performance will be named on the individual task orders, the Air Force said. No funds were obligated on the basic contract, but a task order to fulfill management reporting requirements will be issued to each contractor to satisfy the minimum order guarantee.

The multiple contract award was competitively procured by a partial small business set-aside acquisition with 14 offers received through the Federal Business Opportunities website.

Contract work is expected to be completed by Nov. 30, 2020. The Air Force Installation Contracting Agency at Offutt AFB, Neb., is the contracting activity.