Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, P.C.

Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, P.C. (doing business as HOK) is a for-profit architecture and engineering firm that operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of HOK Group, Inc., competing as a prime contractor exclusively in full-and-open federal procurement—predominantly architectural and engineering design services for institutional and research facility modernization. The firm is based in Washington, DC, operates across 21 distinct federal customer agencies, and generated $1.91 billion in combined potential value across 205 recent federal awards with no subcontract activity reported. HOK competes on technical capability and prior experience rather than SBA set-asides; only one recent award carries a partial small business set-aside designation.

Customer concentration sits overwhelmingly with the Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health Construction organization. NIH Construction accounts for 96 awards (77% of recent prime awards) and $955.5 million of the $1.91 billion combined potential value—approximately 50% of HOK's federal portfolio. The second-largest customer by dollars is the Department of the Army Corps of Engineers Engineering District Middle East, which placed 3 awards totaling $701 million (dominated by a single $700 million IDIQ for Foreign Military Sales support to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense Transformation Initiative). The Department of State Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, the Department of the Treasury Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Department of the Interior National Park Service round out the top five by value, at $102 million, $65.7 million, and $28.8 million respectively.

HOK holds three primary vehicle positions. The NIH Architect Engineering MATOC—a $400 million multiple-award indefinite-delivery contract renewed through June 2032—anchors HOK's NIH work and has generated 37 recent task orders totaling $51.2 million. The firm sits on the Indefinite Delivery Contract HHSN292201500008I at GSA with 57 task orders totaling $57.6 million combined potential value (the largest task-order volume in the source). The Army Corps of Engineers' $700 million Foreign Military Sales IDIQ for Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense Transformation Initiative, awarded June 30, 2023 with ultimate completion June 29, 2026, carries a minimum guarantee of $2,500 and represents HOK's largest single-award vehicle potential. Representative work under the NIH MATOC includes a $16.6 million Bethesda delivery order for construction quality management services on the Surgery, Radiology, and Laboratory Medicine Phase 2 expansion (September 2024, ultimate completion January 31, 2027), a $1.62 million delivery order for technical review and support of FY25 NIH grant biomedical construction projects (September 2025, running through September 2030), and a $1.2 million delivery order for design services supporting NCI space renovation in the Surgery, Radiology, and Laboratory Medicine building (September 2026, completion March 28, 2027). Outside NIH, HOK received a $4.068 million delivery order from the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations for the Hong Kong Selective Improvements Project (August 13, 2026, partial small business set-aside, ultimate completion August 12, 2027) and a $1 million purchase order from the Army Corps of Engineers Middle East for concept rendering and deliverables supporting the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense Transformation Initiative (June 27, 2022).

Activity has grown substantially in 2026—13 awards year-to-date versus 3 in 2025 and 6 in 2024—though the source does not characterize the underlying reasons for the 2023–2025 slowdown. Twenty-three awards with ultimate completion dates in the next twenty-four months carry combined potential value of $85.9 million and will face recompete exposure. HOK's capability portfolio centers on architectural design, engineering services, construction quality management, technical review of biomedical facilities, and landscape architectural services—work grounded primarily in NAICS 541310 (Architectural Services) and 541330 (Engineering Services), accounting for 86 and 49 of the 205 recent awards respectively. Service Contract Inventory data shows HOK invoiced $4.9 million across 16.4 FTEs in FY2022 and $4.4 million across 14.0 FTEs in FY2024 on federally reportable service contracts above the $150,000 threshold; across SCI-reported prime contracts, median government-paid hourly rates ran $147.31/hr with a spectrum from $139.44/hr at the 10th percentile to $159.53/hr at the 90th percentile. On SCI-reportable prime contracts, an average of 25% of contractor hours were performed by subcontractors across a named team of 88 total subs, indicating that HOK typically performs the majority of its delivery in-house while bringing specialized subs for design and technical support work.