O.C. Boeing Unit to Bid on $6-Billion NASA Contract
Just two months after its Space Division decided not to bid on what could be a $6-billion contract to take over many of NASA’s space operations, Boeing Co.’s Orange County-based defense and aerospace subsidiary has decided to enter the fray.
At stake is a contract worth $500 million to $600 million a year for 10 years.
Lockheed Martin Corp., the Bethesda, Md., defense giant, is the only other announced bidder, NASA officials said Thursday. Bids on the first phase of the contract are scheduled to be submitted May 2, with the final award scheduled for June 1998.
Boeing North American’s Downey-based Space Division had decided in February not to sign on as a bidder for NASA’s Consolidated Space Operations Contract because it didn’t have the capability to handle such a large contract.
Space Division officials believed their resources were being stretched to the limit with existing contracts and the job of fitting the operation, which Boeing bought last year from Rockwell International Corp., into Boeing’s corporate structure.
But things change.
John McLuckey, the former Rockwell Aerospace and Defense division president who now heads Boeing’s Seal Beach-based subsidiary, Boeing North American Inc., reviewed the decision and decided that the contract was too big to ignore.
The contract isn’t expected to create significant new employment but will bring a lot of revenue to the winning bidder.
The NASA project is part of the agency’s effort to reduce costs by turning over some of its operations to the private sector.
The contract winner would take over the operation, maintenance and engineering of NASA’s critical data processing and mission control facilities, said John O’Neill, director of space operations for the agency.
Most of the work would be done at existing NASA space sites, including the Jet Propulsion Lab in La Canada, Edwards Air Force Base in Lancaster, Florida’s Cape Kennedy, the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Ala.
NASA is happy that Boeing is bidding because it wasn’t looking forward to staging a contract contest that drew only one entrant, O’Neill said.
“Our whole idea in this was to solicit industry ideas and commercial practices, and we wanted the widest spectrum we could get,” he said.
Boeing is entering its bid in partnership with Lucent Technologies, while Lockheed Martin heads a team that includes AlliedSignal Inc. and Computer Sciences Corp.
Boeing North American was created in December from the aerospace and defense operations that Boeing bought from Seal Beach-based Rockwell for $3.1 billion.
NASA is expected to award each of the two bidders a $4-million contract on May 16 to develop a plan for taking over the agency’s space operations.
