Specialized Engineering Aeronautics and Manufacturing (SEAM)

NASA Johnson Space Center established SEAM, a Master IDIQ for engineering services and solutions supporting design, development, testing, and evaluation of hardware for the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, Mission Control Center, Space Station Training Facility, aircraft, and other JSC projects, with the last date to order set for June 30, 2021 — the vehicle is no longer accepting new orders, having closed five years ago.

The vehicle awarded 34 task orders between February 2017 and July 2021 with a combined potential value of $2.3 million, of which $2.2 million (95 percent) has already been obligated. Ordering activity peaked in 2017–2018 with 11 and 10 orders respectively, then declined sharply; 2019 and 2020 saw only 3 and 4 orders before a brief uptick to 6 orders in 2021.

Competition is tightly concentrated among five primes. Rothe Enterprises, Inc. dominates with 11 awards totaling $553 thousand in combined potential value, followed by Bastion Technologies, Inc. (5 orders, $479 thousand), ATA Engineering, Inc. (5 orders, $448 thousand), American Systems Corporation (3 orders, $338 thousand), and ES3 Prime Logistics Group, Inc. (4 orders, $158 thousand). These five firms capture 82 percent of all task orders and 87 percent of combined potential value; four additional small-business primes hold the remainder.

All 34 orders fund NASA Johnson Space Center. The set-aside mix skews heavily unrestricted: 26 orders (76 percent) carry no set-aside, with 4 orders (12 percent) designated Total Small Business and 4 orders (12 percent) Partial Small Business.

Task orders range from micro-orders under $4 thousand to mid-five-figure efforts. Recent awards include aircraft operations support at $87 thousand (firm fixed price), structural analysis at $205 thousand, and T-38N simulator instruction support with a $112 thousand ceiling. Pricing splits between firm fixed price and time-and-materials engagements. The vehicle's shared ceiling is $49.5 million, but total potential value across all task orders is only $2.3 million, indicating significant unutilized capacity before the ordering deadline closed.

SEAM will provide a streamlined ordering process for a wide range of engineering services and solutions to design, develop, test, and evaluate new hardware, address system and component obsolescence and support the sustainment, alteration, and improvement of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF), Mission Control Center (MCC), Space Station Training Facility (SSTF), aircraft, aircraft programs, projects, activities, and other NASA and Johnson Space Center projects.