The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is soliciting a small-business contractor to establish and operate a centralized Lifecycle Maintenance and Sustainment Working Group at CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C., covering the agency's Integrated Surveillance Tower and Modular Mobile Surveillance System border programs. The contract is structured as a small-business set-aside, firm-fixed-price definitive contract with an estimated value between $50 million and $100 million, a period of performance running through September 29, 2031, and an award expected in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026. CGI Federal holds the incumbent contract for the current function and is ineligible to compete on the set-aside recompete.
What CBP Is Buying
The solicitation centers on two of CBP's primary border surveillance platforms. Integrated Surveillance Towers are fixed, sensor-equipped structures deployed along the southern and northern borders that use long-range cameras, ground surveillance radar, and integrated communications equipment to detect, classify, and track border activity at extended ranges without requiring agents to be physically present. Modular Mobile Surveillance Systems are vehicle-mounted or rapidly repositionable sensor packages that give Border Patrol agents real-time situational awareness in areas where fixed tower infrastructure is impractical or where seasonal or tactical priorities require rapid redeployment of sensors to new locations.
Both the IST and MMSS programs generate substantial ongoing maintenance and sustainment requirements. Sensor arrays, communications hardware, power systems, data links, and software must remain operational across extreme heat, desert dust, high humidity, and high operational tempo. When towers or mobile units go offline, border visibility gaps open directly. The working group function being solicited is specifically designed to prevent those gaps through centralized, structured oversight rather than ad hoc maintenance responses initiated only after a system fails in the field.
The statement of work encompasses four primary areas: business process assessments of existing border surveillance and communications networks; development of long-term automation roadmaps for maintenance activities; system performance oversight across both the IST and MMSS fleets; and direct sustainment support for the programs. The contractor will be embedded at CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C., giving the working group direct access to program managers, technical staff, and agency leadership rather than operating from a remote or contractor-owned support center.
Smart Wall Investment Context
The solicitation sits inside a substantially larger border technology investment wave. CBP and the Department of Homeland Security have announced more than $4.5 billion in new border surveillance contracts under the Smart Wall construction authority, funding expanded IST deployments, new MMSS procurements, upgraded communications backbones, and the integration of autonomous ground sensors and aerial platforms into a unified border Common Operating Picture.
As the tower and mobile surveillance fleets grow in scale, the maintenance and sustainment burden scales proportionally. A fleet of fifty towers requires categorically different lifecycle management than a fleet of five hundred. CBP's move to establish a dedicated, centralized working group reflects recognition that sustaining an enlarged Smart Wall technology estate demands institutional infrastructure — standardized processes, performance metrics, and a long-term automation roadmap — not just reactive repair contracts placed field-by-field as equipment breaks down.
Centralizing this function at CBP headquarters also consolidates institutional knowledge that currently sits in dispersed field sector contracts. Distributed maintenance arrangements can produce siloed performance data, inconsistent replacement cycles across different tower generations, and redundant vendor relationships that drive up unit costs. A single working group conducting business process assessments across the full network can identify those inefficiencies, standardize practices across field sectors, and feed findings directly into procurement planning for future sustainment awards and equipment refresh cycles.
What It Means for Contractors
The most significant structural feature of this solicitation is the small-business set-aside designation. CGI Federal, the incumbent, is a large business — a Canadian IT and professional services firm with broad penetration across the federal IT and program management market. Restricting the recompete to small businesses excludes CGI Federal entirely and hands the competitive opening to firms that qualify under the applicable size standard.
Contractors pursuing this award should align their capabilities to NAICS code 541512 (Computer Systems Design Services) or 541519 (Other Computer Related Services), which typically govern surveillance system integration and lifecycle management work at CBP. Firms should verify the specific NAICS and size standard in the solicitation posted on SAM.gov, as CBP program offices sometimes classify sensor and communications sustainment work under 541330 (Engineering Services) depending on the dominant work content.
Experience that will matter to evaluators includes prior lifecycle maintenance or sustainment program management on DHS or DoD surveillance systems, demonstrated familiarity with IST or MMSS platforms specifically, capability to conduct business process assessments on communications-intensive sensor networks, and experience producing long-term automation roadmaps for federal technical programs. Firms without direct CBP experience should assess whether analogous work on Army or Air Force ground-based sensing programs, or on DHS Transportation Security Administration technology sustainment contracts, can be credibly positioned as equivalent past performance.
The period of performance running through September 2031 means this is not a short-term engagement. Bidders should plan for full-time staff embedded at CBP headquarters, personnel clearance requirements for work involving sensitive border operations data, and management depth sufficient to sustain performance quality across a multi-year effort. Teaming or subcontracting with firms that already hold CBP facility access agreements and active clearances may materially strengthen a proposal where the prime lacks those existing relationships. Award is expected in Q4 FY2026, giving small businesses with relevant DHS program management or border technology experience a defined window to build and submit a competitive proposal. Contractors should also plan proposal narratives that address the displacement of a large-business incumbent directly — evaluators will want to see that a small firm can replicate or exceed the management depth and process rigor that CGI Federal brought to the current contract, without the large-company overhead that CBP is trying to move away from through the set-aside designation.
One additional preparation step: contractors should submit Freedom of Information Act requests for the existing CGI Federal contract vehicle and any available performance assessment records before the solicitation drops. Understanding what CBP already has — and what it believes is working or not working — is the most direct way to shape a proposal that addresses the agency's real pain points rather than a generic lifecycle management value proposition.
