The Woods Hole Group, Inc.

The Woods Hole Group, Inc., a foreign-owned environmental and scientific consulting firm headquartered in Bourne, Massachusetts, provides satellite tracking, data transmission, oceanographic monitoring, and vessel management systems to federal agencies predominantly as a prime contractor (99% of recent awards) on a full-and-open basis with no recurring set-aside posture. The company is a subsidiary of the French firm CLS and operates as a sole provider of ARGOS satellite network services in North America—a positioning that anchors much of its federal revenue to non-competitive sole-source and competitive awards across marine science and environmental monitoring programs.

The Woods Hole Group's customer concentration is extreme and decision-flipping: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dominates both volume and dollars, accounting for 69 awards (66% of the top customers' combined count) with $214 million in combined potential value—roughly 82% of the vendor's total federal pipeline. The Department of the Army Corps of Engineers contributes 42 awards worth $9.4 million, and the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey provides 27 awards worth $4.9 million. Together, these three agencies account for 90% of the combined potential value across all 229 awards in the dataset. NOAA's dominance spans satellite data transmission for marine mammal and sea turtle tracking, National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON) and Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS) operations and maintenance, vessel monitoring system (VMS) data transmission, and ARGOS platform access. The vendor holds three major NOAA IDVs: a $74 million multiple-award environmental field services contract (awarded October 2023, running through September 2033) for installation, operation, maintenance, and repair of water level and oceanographic observation stations nationwide; a $6.5 million single-award ARGOS platform and data transmission contract (awarded August 2025, running through August 2030); and an older $250 thousand single-award blanket purchase agreement with the Bureau of Land Management for sage-grouse data acquisition services.

Recent representative work includes a $9.9 million delivery order from NOAA (awarded September 2024) for operation, maintenance, repair, and management of NWLON and PORTS in the Western Gulf Region through September 2033 under the environmental field services IDIQ; a $6.7 million delivery order for the same services in the East Coast Mid-Atlantic region (awarded July 2024); a $4.6 million delivery order for East Coast Northeast region operations (awarded July 2024); a $1.868 million definitive contract from Naval Sea Systems Command (awarded September 2025) for satellite airtime and technical services through September 2030; a $171 thousand delivery order from NOAA (awarded May 2026) for ARGOS satellite data transmission services to track turtle locations; and a $245 thousand sole-source purchase order from NOAA (awarded May 2024) for vessel monitoring system data transmission supporting up to 160 vessels in Hawaii. The vendor also holds smaller IDVs and blanket purchase agreements with the Fish and Wildlife Service for polar bear and migratory bird satellite data services, a $250 thousand sage-grouse data BPA with the Bureau of Land Management Idaho Region, and a $187.5 thousand USGS IDIQ for satellite data collection and location processing.

Activity has been volatile but remains substantial: six awards in 2022, sixteen in 2023, thirteen in 2024, ten in 2025, and four year-to-date in 2026. Nine awards with combined potential value of $3.8 million reach ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months, creating modest recompete exposure. The top five parent vehicles—all NOAA and Army Corps IDIQs—carry 45, 11, 11, 11, and 8 task orders respectively, demonstrating heavy reliance on recurring task orders against established master contracts rather than new standalone awards.

The vendor's top NAICS categories are Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services (46 awards), Computing Infrastructure Providers and Data Processing (43 awards), and Satellite Telecommunications (33 awards), with secondary weight on engineering services and electronic equipment repair and maintenance. Top PSC codes center on Support—Professional: Other (57 awards) and IT and Telecommunications services (16 awards), reflecting the satellite data transmission and systems integration character of the work.

Service Contract Inventory data captures $4.4 million in SCI-reportable invoiced revenue across FY2022–FY2024, with $2.6 million in FY2022, zero in FY2023, and $1.8 million in FY2024; this represents only the subset of federal service contracts above the $150,000 threshold and excludes goods, micro-purchases, and much of the vendor's actual federal revenue. SCI shows minimal FTE intensity (0.4 FTEs in FY2022, declining to zero in FY2023–FY2024 across recorded contracts), suggesting the vendor's federal work is heavily fixed-price and materials-based (satellite platform access, ARGOS airtime fees, subscription renewals) rather than labor-loaded. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable prime contracts span a wide spectrum, from a 10th percentile of $1,643.64/hr to a median of $1,910.13/hr and 90th percentile of $24,801.67/hr, indicating occasional high-value expert-witness or specialized consulting task orders. The vendor performs all reported SCI hours internally with no named subcontractor engagement.

The Woods Hole Group subcontracts minimally (1% of recent awards) and operates almost entirely as a prime contractor, with two recent sub-awards listed: a sub-award to Electric Power Research Institute (September 2024) for securing access to offshore and coastal sites for acoustic monitoring sensor installation, and a sub-award to the University of Miami (September 2023) for data analysis, quality control, and technical review work on an oceanographic research grant. The vendor's prime footprint encompasses federal grants from the Office of Naval Research under the Basic and Applied Scientific Research program (CFDA 12.300), including a $150 thousand project grant (August 2024–July 2025) and prior awards totaling $300 thousand for advancing marine animal movement studies and satellite tagging research data submission to the U.S. Animal Telemetry Network, plus a project grant for dynamics of sand dunes beneath internal solitary waves in the South China Sea (awarded May 2023, running through April 2027). These grants position the vendor as both a service provider to operational federal oceanographic programs and a research partner advancing marine science and animal telemetry methods for naval-relevant applications.