NCS Pearson, Inc.

NCS Pearson, Inc., a foreign-owned, for-profit organization headquartered in Austin, Texas, supplies psychological and clinical assessment products, standardized educational testing tools, and digital assessment platforms to federal agencies as a prime contractor across 153 customer organizations. The company competes in full-and-open procurement without set-aside designation, anchoring its federal footprint to direct sales of copyrighted assessment instruments, testing kits, scoring services, and cloud-based administration platforms such as Q-Global and Q-Interactive.

NCS Pearson's recent award activity spans psychological testing (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory series, Beck inventories, Millon instruments), early childhood and adaptive behavior assessments (Vineland, ESI-3), critical thinking appraisals (Watson-Glaser), language proficiency exams, and neuropsychological evaluation materials. Representative prime work includes a $499,999 definitive contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs Strategic Acquisition Center (September 2024) for psychological tests for the VA's Veterans Healthcare Administration Office of Mental Health, a $1,072,077 single-award indefinite delivery contract with the Department of Defense Education Activity (March 2024) for early childhood screening tools running through February 2029, and a $528,780 single-award IDC with U.S. Special Operations Command (September 2023) for MMPI-3 score report services through August 2028. More recent orders include a $143,000 purchase order from the Federal Aviation Administration (April 2026) for MMPI-2 assessments supporting air traffic controller hiring and a $69,041 delivery order from DoDEA (March 2025) for early childhood screening tools.

NCS Pearson's customer base is heavily concentrated within the Department of Defense ecosystem. The Department of Veterans Affairs Headquarters leads by potential value at $13.7 million across 19 awards, followed by DoDEA at $8.6 million (54 awards), the Department of the Army Medical Command at $8.2 million (68 awards), and the Defense Health Agency at $7.4 million (25 awards). By award count, the top five customers—the Department of the Army (115 awards), the Air Force (103 awards), the Office of the Secretary of Defense (81 awards), the Navy (76 awards), and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (72 awards)—account for 25% of all recent awards, though this concentration masks substantial fragmentation: combined potential value from these top five represents less than 1% of the total portfolio.

NCS Pearson holds multiple single-award indefinite delivery contracts and blanket purchase agreements anchoring its work. The Federal Supply Schedule GS35F4650G carries 274 task orders worth $10.7 million, and GSA Federal Supply Schedule GS10F0167J carries 47 task orders worth $16.7 million. Single-award IDCs with DoDEA (early childhood screening, psychology assessments), the Marine Corps (MMPI-2-RF materials), USSOCOM (MMPI-3 scoring), the VA Veterans Integrated Service Network 19 (neuropsychological kits), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (critical thinking assessments) provide multi-year vehicles for recurring orders. The recompete cliff is minimal—five awards worth $429 thousand total reach completion within the next twenty-four months.

NCS Pearson's category concentration reflects its core business: Computer and Software Stores (264 awards), Educational Support Services (175 awards), Software Publishers (141 awards), and Book Publishers (129 awards) dominate the NAICS footprint, while Medical and Surgical Instruments and Equipment (170 awards) and Information Technology Software (90 awards) anchor the PSC coding. Award volume has trended flat to slightly declining—20 awards in 2022, down to 13 in both 2025 and 2026 year-to-date—reflecting the nature of transactional purchases against standing vehicles rather than new competitive procurements. The company's 1,765-award portfolio carries $2.21 billion in combined potential value, with $654.8 million (30%) obligated to date, indicating substantial long-tail execution across smaller purchase orders and delivery orders.

NCS Pearson received one federal grant sub-award: a sub-grant from the University of California, Los Angeles (December 2024) under the National Neuropsychology Network project, where NCS Pearson supplies technology, content expertise, Q-Interactive platform licenses, paper test materials, API maintenance, and consultation on the WAIS-IV, WMS-IV, D-KEFS, and CVLT3 instruments to support neuropsychological research and clinical workflows.