Engineering partnership in $750 million FEMA housing inspection contract
FEMA has awarded a new $750 million contract to a joint engineering venture to provide housing inspection services — on short notice — to the U.S. government in areas affected by disasters
Two respected engineering firms — Fairfax, Virginia-based Dewberry and San Francisco, California-based URS (NYSE: URS) — have formed a joint venture called Partnership for Response and Recovery which has received a performance-based $750 million, four-and-a-half-year contract from FEMA to provide the federal government with support services to help people affected by disasters in the United States.
The partnership already has a contract, signed in February 2001, to serve FEMA’s response and recovery division by providing housing inspection and management-support services. The new contract calls on the companies to mobilize inspectors, on short notice, to areas declared by the president as disaster sites to examine housing situations there. Based on the companies’ inspection, FEMA will determine the amount to be awarded to applicants in the disaster area. During the 2005 hurricane season, the partnership deployed more than 2,900 housing inspectors and completed more than one million housing inspections.
Dewberry was established exactly fifty years ago as a six-men surveying and engineering firm. It now has more than 1,800 employees and in 2005 had $300 million in sales. URS is older and bigger: It was established in 1904; has nearly 30,000 employees working out of 300 offices in more than 20 countries; and its FY2004 revenue was $3.92 billion.
