HM&E Cargo/Weapons Handling and Stowage System Support Services

Naval Sea Systems Command established this Master IDIQ on September 27, 2019, to provide engineering and technical services for cargo and weapons handling systems aboard Navy surface combatants, submarines, and shore installations, with ordering authority that closed on September 26, 2024. The vehicle is no longer active for new task orders.

Activity has slowed significantly. The IDIQ issued 38 task orders across its five-year ordering window, with annual volume peaking at 10 orders in 2021 and declining to 2 orders in 2023 before recovering slightly to 5 in 2024. The most recent task order was awarded September 5, 2024, just before the ordering deadline. Combined potential value across all orders is $61.3 million, with $42.7 million (70 percent) obligated to date.

Competition is concentrated among three primes. Delphinus Engineering, Inc., holds 15 orders worth $27.1 million combined potential value (44 percent of total potential value). QED Systems, Inc., and NDI Engineering Company follow with 8 orders ($15.4 million) and 9 orders ($12.9 million), respectively. These three firms account for approximately 95 percent of task-order count. Two smaller firms—Tecnico Corporation (2 orders, $3.6 million) and Continental Tide Defense Systems, Inc., (2 orders, $2.1 million)—round out the field of seven distinct primes.

All 38 task orders were placed by Naval Sea Systems Command, creating zero customer diversification. Work spans cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-no-fee pricing. Typical task orders show ceiling values in the $1 million to $3 million range, though several outliers exceed $5 million. Recent orders from 2024 to early 2023 indicate task orders for advanced weapons elevators, technical instruction support, and weapons-handling system integration and testing, with contract durations generally 12 to 24 months.

About 79 percent of orders carry no set-aside designation; small business set-asides account for 21 percent of the 38 orders placed. Place of performance spans multiple Navy installations and combatant commands, reflecting the distributed nature of cargo and weapons-handling system support across the fleet.

This IDIQ provides engineering functions and ship repair support; design, development, build, and testing; technology insertion; performance specifications; performance and data analysis; system fault tree analysis; system safety analysis; system integration; system safety; installation support; computer programming and software engineering; software verification and validation; casualty support, equipment overhaul, groom support; ILS document preparation and system training development; and on-site technical support, alteration services, System certification support and staging in support of surface fleet, submarine, and shore-based installations in support of HM&E machinery and systems, other Federal Agency vessels, federally contracted vessels and platforms, foreign militaries and NATO countries, selected maritime agency vessels, and select land-based sites.