ANDOVER — A local company may soon be in a position to hire up to 200 new software engineers now that it is part of a $50 billion federal contract to provide consulting and information technology services to various government agencies.
DRC, Dynamics Research Corp., headquartered on Frontage Road in Andover, has been awarded a government-wide acquisition contract, or GWAC, which allows the company to be used by any agency that needs IT and consulting work.
"We believe this is a transformational contract for the growth of our company," said Larry O'Brien, vice president for business development at DRC, which employs 1,500 people worldwide and 300 at the Andover site.
He said the company could hire between 20 and 200 new people to do work under the new contract, many of them in Andover, where the company's systems engineering and IT organizations are located. The way a GWAC deal works is that money is made available by the federal government to various agencies, but only allows certain companies to bid on the work.
In this case, the government named 59 companies that are eligible to bid, which was a big win for DRC, O'Brien said.
"It doesn't guarantee we'll get picked, but only the holders of this (GWAC) can compete for this work," he said, noting that the company has been working for two years to get this contract award finalized. He said it could mean anywhere from $10 million to $40 million a year in new contracts for agencies like Homeland Security, or the departments of Defense, Agriculture, Energy and others.
The timing of the announcement couldn't be better, he said, since there are hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus money being made available to federal agencies to upgrade their computer systems. Because of that, the first contract could be signed in less than three months, O'Brien said.
DRC was one of the initial 29 companies awarded the contract in 2007 to support the federal government's needs in its daily operations, its protection of infrastructure, the fight against terrorism, and the development and marketing of emerging technologies.
That award was challenged by companies not included in the original award. But the dispute has been settled, O'Brien said.
In addition to Andover, DRC has a group in Wilmington, as well as Washington, D.C., Orlando and Dayton, as well as smaller locations throughout the country.
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