The Lightship Group, LLC

The Lightship Group, LLC, doing business as Lightships, operates as a wholly owned child of Walashek Industrial & Marine, Inc., a for-profit Subchapter S marine-engineering manufacturer based in Tukwila, Washington. The Lightship Group is a small business limited liability company headquartered in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, competing exclusively as a prime contractor (100% of recent awards) in ship repair, dockside maintenance, and generator services for federal maritime agencies, with no subcontractor activity in the award footprint.

The vendor's customer concentration is extreme and decision-defining. The Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dominates by both award count and dollar value, representing 88 of 259 awards (75% coverage of the top-five customers) and $161.3 million of the $194.7 million combined potential value across all awards — 83% of total exposure. The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Coast Guard places 74 awards worth $3.8 million; the Department of the Navy's Pacific Fleet Forces places 49 awards worth $7.7 million; the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration holds 31 awards worth $6.2 million; and the Navy's Atlantic Fleet Forces Command adds 16 awards worth $1.7 million. Together these five agencies account for 75% of recent awards and 95% of combined potential value. The Lightship Group's customer base, though spanning twelve federal agencies, is structurally NOAA-dependent.

The Lightship Group holds two primary indefinite delivery vehicles: a $73.8 million multiple-award NOAA dockside-repair contract (set-aside for small business, running through August 2028) and a $250 thousand U.S. Army Corps of Engineers standby-generator services BPA for three northeastern hurricane-barrier installations (Cape Cod Canal, Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in Providence, and New Bedford Hurricane Barrier, completion date November 2025). The NOAA contract is the dominant vehicle, spanning task orders for ship repairs across NOAA's research and operational vessel fleet including the R/V Gloria Michele, NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow, and NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. The top named IDVs in the broader portfolio (predominantly Navy contracts) carry 40 and 29 task orders respectively, but carry significantly smaller dollar values than the NOAA vehicle.

Representative prime work demonstrates the vendor's core capability scope: a $992,151 delivery order for fiscal year 2024 dockside repairs on the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow awarded September 2023; a $915,682 definitive contract from the U.S. Coast Guard for dockside repairs to the USCGC IDA LEWIS awarded June 2023; a $456,496 definitive contract for maintenance and repair services on the USCGC CAMPBELL awarded August 2022; and a $173,350 firm-fixed-price purchase order from Naval Sea Systems Command for generator maintenance with an ultimate completion date of December 2030, awarded February 2026. Smaller purchase orders cover specialized marine work: a $132,271 repair order on NOAA's R/V Gloria Michelle including aft deck gantry replacement and fire detection installation; a $26,145 small-business set-aside for generator drive-end shaft seal replacement on the NOAA Ship Henry Bigelow; and a $36,990 purchase order for power-distribution panels on USCGC CAMPBELL and USCGC TAHOMA.

Activity has declined markedly. The vendor recorded four awards in 2021, five in 2022, and seven in 2023, followed by only two awards in 2025 and one in 2026 year to date. The portfolio carries 346 total awards spanning 1999 to present, but recent years show contraction. NAICS concentration sits with Ship Building and Repairing (218 awards) and Engineering Services (75 awards); PSC concentration mirrors maritime focus with Non-Nuclear Ship Repair (East) representing 88 awards and Marine Engineering services dominating the remainder.

SCI-reportable service contracting is minimal and declining: $862 thousand invoiced across 2.2 FTEs in FY2022 and $621 thousand across 0.7 FTEs in FY2023, representing only $1.5 million across two prime records in the source data. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-captured work median at $321.78 per hour, with the 90th percentile at $428.07 per hour. The vendor performs work in-house on captured SCI records — zero percent of hours are subcontracted — but SCI captures only service contracts above the $150,000 threshold and excludes goods, products, and micro-purchases, making it an incomplete view of the vendor's federal activity, which is predominantly ship repair and maintenance on task orders and smaller purchase orders below or outside SCI reporting.