WT 360: The market from all angles

COVID-19 vaccinations are rolling out across the country and as that happens, federal agencies and many of their contractors are encouraging their employees to get inoculated. But can agencies require contractor employees to get vaccinated and how can they formalize that requirement? We get some answers in this episode from Al Krachman and Brooke Iley, partners at law firm Blank Rome who specializ...

In a crowded mergers and acquisitions environment, Bluestone Investment Partners has carved out its own niche by focusing on companies in the $15 million-to-$50 million revenue range. They often are just emerging from the small business set-aside arena and seek more resources to compete for full and open opportunities. John Allen, co-founder and managing partner of Bluestone Investment Partners, s...

FCW Senior Editor Lauren Williams, our resident expert on the emerging new cybersecurity standards for contractors, stops by Project 38 to talk with Editor Nick Wakeman and Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers about the latest developments. The Defense Department is making steady progress on the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification despite ups and downs and potential delays. Williams also fills...

Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman and Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers see little slowing the pace of mergers and acquisitions in the federal market with buyers of all types continuing to make big deals. In this episode, they discuss several reasons for the strong M&A activity including the availability of credit and other financial resources, a customer who favors larger and more cons...

This episode of Project 38 brings together two minds that have different ways of looking at the government contracting landscape but they both represent a critical stakeholder: the investor. Representing investors that mainly focus on public companies is Jon Raviv, an equity research analyst for Citigroup. The private investor’s point-of-view comes courtesy of Mark Frantz, co-founder and general p...

BlueHalo hit the market hard with six acquisitions in 2020 and as CEO Jonathan Moneymaker explains to Editor Nick Wakeman, this latest platform out of Arlington Capital Partners is pursuing opportunities around the transformation of modern warfare. BlueHalo's acquisition strategy has focused on capabilities around space superiority, directed energy, missile defense, C4ISR, cybersecurity and intell...

It’s been a year since Science Applications International Corp. made one of the biggest acquisitions of 2020 and this conversation between Editor Nick Wakeman and Bob Genter, SAIC's defense and civilian president, starts with the question: Was the Unisys Federal acquisition worth it? ​Then they dive deeper into market opportunities, impacts of COVID-19 and lessons learned how to prepare for and ex...

Whether 2021 is the “Year Of The GWAC” remains to be seen, but government-wide acquisition contract vehicles will be high on the agenda for the companies pursuing them and the agencies that will be using them. In this episode of Project 38, Senior Staff Ross Wilkers goes to three leading market research and proposal specialists to get their views and insight into the overall GWAC landscape and wha...

Today’s market stands on the brink of great change and as SAIC's chief technology officer Charles Onstott explains to WT Editor Nick Wakeman, there are four mega-trends shaping those changes that companies need to embrace. These trends are driven by people and processes, but enabled by technology. Onstott says you have to weigh several items in order to take advantage of these mega-trends, includi...

What if the whole exercise of making sense out of all the data in existence on the government contracting market is a matter of tradecraft? In this episode of Project 38, Brian Lindholm of FedSavvy Strategies answers that question and explains the idea of turning that exercise into a tradecraft. Lindholm and his colleagues at FedSavvy Strategies work with other contractors on just that: making sen...

The impacts of COVID-19 coupled with emerging technologies translates to government customers having different expectations and being more open to new ways of addressing challenges. John Goodman, chief executive of Accenture Federal Services explains in this conversation with WT Editor Nick Wakeman what those challenges mean to his company and where he sees the market moving forward. Goodman's per...

The long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will include changed workplaces and government customers adjusting how they do business and their priorities. In this episode, Deloitte public sector leader Mike Canning shares his views on these trends with Editor Nick Wakeman. He expects the future will have a hybrid workforce, where location will no longer dictate who companies hire and how they se...

2021 has gotten off to a fast start with the new Biden Administration coming in and there has been plenty of business activity as well. In this episode of Project 38, the editorial teams from Washington Technology and FCW talk with WT Editor Nick Wakeman about the news so far. WT Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers shares his insights on what's behind the proposed merger of Peraton, Perspecta and Nor...

In November, Telos Corp. became the latest government technology and cybersecurity company to tell its story to Wall Street and bring in public investors for its next phase of growth. For this episode of Project 38, Telos CEO John Wood takes us inside the five-decade-old firm’s initial public offering and why that path makes sense for them. Much of Telos’ growth leading up to the IPO has been “boo...

In this episode of Project 38, Smartronix CEO Peter LaMontagne explains a new concept called “More’s Law” that sees agencies demand more data, more often, from more sources, in more formats and with more self-service tools to drive insights. As he tells Editor Nick Wakeman, none of that can happen without a robust cloud infrastructure. Smartronix was an early cloud pioneer in the federal market an...

We can finally turn the page to 2021 but any look to the future requires some looking back at 2020. In this episode of Project 38, PM Consulting Group’s founder Walter Barnes gives Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers the ground-floor perspective on both what drove the federal market in 2020 and factors to shape it in 2021. The pandemic remains absolutely central to activity in just about every corner...

2020 was a year like no other. The pandemic kicked it off in March and continues. The year came to a close with a massive hack of government systems and with a contentious presidential transition underway. In the final 2020 episode of Project 38, Editor Nick Wakeman gathered reporters from Washington Technology, FCW and Defense Systems to review their top stories of the year. Lauren Williams, seni...

Amentum is a new name to the government market but its people are no strangers given its past history as the former AECOM management services business. In this episode of Project 38, Amentum CEO John Vollmer brings us up to speed on how the new(ish) company navigated 2020 and is integrating its recent acquisition of DynCorp. Nine months after its launch, Amentum closed its deal for DynCorp Interna...

Megan Metzger of Dcode, the organization built to bring commercial technology firms into the federal market, and Editor Nick Wakeman talk about opportunities sparked by the incoming Biden administration. But many of those opportunities have more to do with a changing market than with politics. Dcode's CEO describes in this episode how government buyers are looking for more commercial technologies,...

The coronavirus pandemic is one of those situations where collaborations between the public and private sector entities had to accelerate given the situation. In this episode of Project 38, Guidehouse’s two lead executives share their views with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers on what those partnerships looked like in 2020 and how change going forward. CEO Scott McIntyre and Chief Operating Offic...

Many people see little change from the Trump administration to the Biden administration as far as tech priorities are concerned. But in this conversation with Editor Nick Wakeman, 18F co-founder Greg Godbout describes what he sees as an opportunity to accelerate the evolution toward a digital transformation of government. In addition to 18F, Godbout also led digital services efforts at the Environ...

We are always told that government contracting is a people business at its core even as technology and connectivity loom large. In this episode of Project 38, we hear from the GovCon market’s leading human capital specialists on how COVID-19 has wrought permanent changes to the way companies recruit and develop their work force. Jon Barney and Sam Dinte, respectively of Odgers Berndston and Dinte...

From her perch as president of Microsoft’s U.S. regulated industries group, Toni Townes-Whitley looks across both the legacy of the software giant as well as its future. In this episode of Project 38, she speaks with Editor Nick Wakeman about what that future entails and how it is reflected in major wins such as the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract. Whitley also talks about social justic...

Even in normal election year, the transition from one administration to the next create uncertainty in the market. In this episode of Project 38, Editor Nick Wakeman speaks with business development and capture management expert Bob Lohfeld on what companies should be doing to successfully move through these next few months. His biggest piece of advice is to realize many IT priorities will not cha...

A Nov. 30 deadline looms for compliance with the CMMC cyber standard's interim rule, so Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman checks in with FCW and Defense Systems Senior Editor Lauren Williams to get her take on what industry should be doing. Williams and Wakeman talk about what compliance with the Defense Department's new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification means, the challenges ahea...