Nelson Engineering CO.

Nelson Engineering CO., a design and facility engineering firm based in Merritt Island, Florida, operates as a subsidiary of Salas O'Brien Inc. and competes as a prime contractor (95% of recent awards) on architecture and engineering delivery orders across civilian federal agencies, with no SBA set-aside designations. The company is a for-profit corporate entity holding the position of child in a larger parent structure and brings over thirty years of federal contracting history (first award dated February 1996) to its work in facilities engineering, infrastructure upgrades, and technical assessments.

Nelson Engineering's customer concentration centers on NASA and health research facilities. The top five funding agencies—accounting for 59% of awards by count and 96% of combined potential value—are led by Kennedy Space Center (50 awards, $780.9 million combined potential value), followed by the National Institutes of Health Construction office (25 awards, $31.5 million), Glenn Research Center (20 awards, $21.6 million), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (12 awards, $16.9 million), and the National Park Service (8 awards, $11.2 million). Kennedy Space Center anchors the portfolio, representing $780.9 million in potential value across infrastructure and electrical system work; GSA Federal Acquisition Service adds $41.9 million in indirect support. The customer base spans forty distinct agencies, but NASA and health-research funding accounts for the overwhelming share of dollars.

Nelson Engineering holds a $300 million multiple-award Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract with NASA's Kennedy Space Center (Southeast Regional Architect and Engineering, awarded January 2022, extending through September 2026) and a $151 billion multiple-award IDIQ under the Missile Defense Agency's Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program (awarded December 2025, through December 2035). Beneath the SERAE vehicle, Nelson has issued task orders across Kennedy, Marshall, Stennis, Glenn, Michoud, and Vandenberg Air Force Base for electrical system revitalization, mechanical upgrades, construction support, and design work. Recent representative orders under SERAE include a $506,992 pump house alternatives study at Kennedy (April 2025), a $409,053 design order for low-voltage upgrades to the booster fabrication facility (October 2024), a $270,301 ESDC order for institutional power systems safety upgrades at Kennedy (February 2026), and a $516,594 design package for bascule bridge refurbishment at Stennis Space Center (October 2024). Nelson also places work under GSA's Multiple Award Schedule (54 task orders, $44.6 million combined potential value) and Professional Services Schedule (29 task orders, $19.9 million), delivering facility condition assessments, architectural design, and engineering services to NIH, NIST, and the National Park Service. The SHIELD vehicle, though valued at $151 billion, carries an initial delivery order to Nelson of only $500 as of December 2025, suggesting early-stage participation pending future task orders.

Activity has grown modestly across the period 2022–2025 (17 awards in 2022 to 21 in 2024, with 10 in 2025 and 2 in 2026 year-to-date), though the award count reflects task order issuance against standing IDIQs rather than new contract wins. Six awards with combined potential value of $4.3 million face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months and therefore present recompete exposure. SCI-reported invoicing of federal service contracts above the $150,000 threshold grew from $2.3 million in FY2022 to $7.3 million in FY2024, reflecting an expanding workforce delivering to NASA and civilian agencies—the FTE trajectory shows growth from 9.7 FTEs in FY2022 to 23.7 FTEs in FY2024 across SCI-captured prime contracts. On federal services contracts captured in SCI, median government-paid rates ran around $157.90/hr, with senior labor pricing through $332.41/hr and a 10th percentile floor approaching zero (reflecting task orders with minimal billable hours or anomalous rate structures). Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, Nelson engages subcontractors for approximately 5% of total contractor hours, with 17 named subcontractors reported across the dataset, indicating a lean sub model centered on direct delivery.

Nelson's subcontractor footprint spans primes including Chugach Solutions Enterprise (design and engineering services during construction for military working dog kennel facilities and electric vehicle charging facilities, awarded 2024), IBM (enterprise support services for A4 and SAF/IE, 2024–2025), and an unnamed prime on a Consolidated Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, and Test (COMET) contract (October 2025). Nelson's concrete capability portfolio, grounded in task-order history, spans facility condition assessments, infrastructure design and engineering during construction, electrical system upgrades, mechanical system revitalization, power system improvements, fire protection design, arc flash studies, and specialized technical evaluations across NASA centers, NIH, NIST, and the National Park Service. The company's primary NAICS classification is 541310 (Architectural Services) and 541330 (Engineering Services), with top PSC framing in architect-and-engineering general categories and professional engineering support. Nelson competes in full-and-open competitions without set-aside protection, succeeding across multiple federal agencies and vehicle types to build a portfolio exceeding $927 million in combined potential value.