National Ocean Service Hydrographic Surveying Services

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Acquisition and Grants Office, Eastern Acquisition Division, established a Master IDIQ on December 9, 2019, to procure hydrographic surveying services supporting the creation and maintenance of nautical charts. The vehicle's ordering period closed on December 31, 2024, and it is no longer available for new task orders.

The vehicle funded 43 task orders through October 2024, with combined potential value of $179.7 million and $174.3 million obligated (97% of combined potential). Recent activity remained steady: the vehicle averaged 8.6 orders per year from 2020 through 2024, peaking at 10 orders in both 2020 and 2021. Task orders funded hydrographic surveys and related data acquisition across U.S. coastal and inland navigable waters, including routine charting missions, hurricane response efforts, and specialized autonomous data collection in Alaska and the Bering Sea.

Competition concentrated moderately among seven primes. Etrac, A Woolpert Company led by order count (8 orders, $35.6 million combined potential value) and by total value. Ocean Surveys, Inc., Terrasond LIMITED, Geodynamics LLC, and David Evans And Associates, Inc. each held between 6 and 8 orders. The five leading firms captured 84% of task orders by count and 83% by combined potential value, with a long tail of two smaller primes holding the remainder. All 43 orders funded NOAA only; customer concentration was complete.

All orders were unrestricted (no set-aside). Task orders ranged widely in value: small emergency response orders under $250,000, mid-range regional surveys from $3 million to $4 million, and larger multi-region efforts reaching $6 million to $8 million. The source advertised a 2:1 small-business reserve ratio at solicitation (targeting up to two small-business awards among seven total awards), but the task-order portfolio does not stratify by awardee business size, so actual small-business award distribution cannot be determined from the available data. Work performed throughout U.S. coastal and inland areas, with sustained activity in Alaska, the Gulf Coast, Great Lakes, and Atlantic coastal regions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Acquisition and Grants Office, Eastern Acquisition Division (EAD), Norfolk, VA on behalf of the National Ocean Service (NOS), Office of Coast Survey (OCS), Hydrographic Surveys Division (HSD) has contracted highly qualified to provide hydrographic surveying services to support NOAA's mission to acquire hydrographic survey data to support the creation and maintenance of nautical charts.