Baird-Stantec Joint Venture

Baird-Stantec Joint Venture, a foreign-owned small business joint venture based in Madison, Wisconsin, delivers architect-engineer, environmental engineering, and infrastructure design services to federal natural-resource and water-management agencies as a prime contractor (100% of recent awards), with a portfolio anchored to small-business set-aside indefinite delivery contracts worth $154 million across the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The joint venture is a child entity of W.f. Baird & Associates LTD., a foreign-owned parent, and operates under primary NAICS 541330 (Engineering Services) with secondary exposure in environmental remediation consulting. Baird-Stantec competes predominantly under total small business set-asides on its indefinite delivery vehicles, though individual task orders below the IDC ceiling frequently carry no set-aside designation.

Customer concentration aligns with water-resource and coastal-restoration missions. The top five agencies by award count account for 78% of recent awards, with the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA splitting leadership (11 awards each, $142.9 million and $56.8 million combined potential value respectively) and the Department of Agriculture's NRCS Central Region accounting for 8 awards at $5 million. However, the potential-value ranking shifts dramatically when the $900 million USACE Southwest Division multiple-award MATOC (awarded December 2025 for architect-engineer planning and engineering services through 2033) is included; that single vehicle accounts for roughly 78% of the joint venture's total combined potential value across all awards, though task orders against it remain nascent ($2,500 minimum guarantee to date). This represents substantial recompete risk and opportunity concentration in a single customer vehicle.

Baird-Stantec holds five material IDIQs: a $50 million single-award contract with NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service for regional architect-engineer environmental services in the Gulf of Mexico (set-aside for total small business, through May 2028) with eight task orders totaling $6.9 million to date; a $20 million single-award NRCS contract for architect-engineer services across Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota (set-aside for total small business, through November 2026) with six task orders invoiced; a $49 million multiple-award MATOC with USACE's Mississippi Valley Division Upper Three Districts for architect-engineer services including civil works planning and design (set-aside for total small business, through July 2029); a $25 million multiple-award IDC with USACE's Great Lakes & Ohio Rivers Division for civil works river design (through September 2029); and a $24 million single-award IDC with USACE Philadelphia District for architect-engineer services supporting the Philadelphia Civil Works Program (set-aside for total small business, awarded January 2026, through January 2031). Representative delivery-order work includes a $5.17 million total small business set-aside with NOAA for data acquisition and engineering-design services supporting the Raccoon Island Restoration Project in Louisiana (awarded September 2023, through August 2026); a $3.45 million delivery order with USACE for construction contract documents and environmental compliance to meet 2008 NMFS Biological Opinion requirements (through September 2026); a $1.54 million architect-engineer design order with USACE for Memphis infrastructure work (awarded November 2025, through October 2026); and multiple watershed planning and environmental assessment delivery orders with NRCS ranging from $864 thousand to $1.44 million for dam assessments and supplemental watershed plans in Indiana and Illinois.

Activity grew sharply year over year—from a single award in 2020 to nineteen in 2024—before stabilizing at twelve awards in 2025 and five in 2026 (as of mid-July). Fourteen awards (combined potential value $17.7 million) reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, creating a recompete window; notably, the NRCS $20 million IDC completion date of November 5, 2026, represents the largest single-contract recompete cliff in that window. The joint venture has not yet engaged subcontractors at scale: SCI-reported invoicing totals $219 thousand across FY2023–FY2024 (0.1 FTEs in FY2023, 0.4 FTEs in FY2024), with government-paid rates around $247/hr median and no material sub-hours share, indicating the joint venture is delivering labor-light technical and administrative work or that most delivery orders remain in early-stage mobilization. The $1.16 billion combined potential value sits dramatically ahead of obligated dollars ($20.6 million, or 2%), reflecting the ceiling value of large IDCs and the nascent drawdown against the $900 million USACE MATOC.

Baird-Stantec has named Moffatt & Nichol, an infrastructure advisory firm, as a subcontractor on coastal restoration and engineering design work for NOAA's Weeks Bay project, and Industrial Economics Inc. on an open-ocean restoration plan and environmental assessment in the Gulf of Mexico, signaling subcontractor leverage for specialized environmental and coastal engineering expertise rather than organic capacity scaling.