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USNS Bruce C. Heezen
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3PSC LLC in Cape Canaveral, FL won a $19.2 million firm-fixed-price contract for the operation and maintenance of 6 U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command (MSC) oceanographic survey ships worldwide. This contract includes options, including a 7th-vessel option, 4 one-year options and 5 six-month award-term options, which if exercised, would bring the cumulative value to $266.5 million.

3PSC will perform the work worldwide and expects to complete it by Sept. 30/10. If all options are exercised, work is expected to be completed in March 2017. This contract was competitively procured via the MSC website, with multiple proposals solicited and 5 offers received by the Military Sealift Command in Washington, DC (N00033-09-C-2504).

DID has more on the MSC fleet of oceanographic survey ships…

MSC’s oceanographic survey ships are special mission ships, which are operated by civilian mariners who work for private companies under contract. The names of the 7 oceanographic survey ships are (click to view photos):

• USNS Bowditch
• USNS Bruce C. Heezen
• USNS Henson
• USNS Pathfinder
• USNS Mary Sears
• USNS Sumner
• USNS John McDonnell

The first 6 are multipurpose and perform acoustic, biological, physical and geophysical surveys, providing much of the U.S. military’s information on the ocean environment. These ships use multi-beam, wide-angle, precision sonar systems that make it possible to continuously chart a broad section of the ocean floor. The 7th ship, the USNS John McDonnell, collects data in coastal regions around the world. The data collected by these ships helps improve technology in undersea warfare, ship detection and charting the world’s coastlines.