Germantown-based IDL Solutions Inc. announced today it has won a $2.5 billion contract award with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a joint venture with Pragmatics Inc.

Under the highly sought after 10-year Information & Computing Technologies for the 21st Century (ICT-21) contract, the IDL-Pragmatics team can provide a broad range of IT infrastructure support services and deliver best-of-breed solutions for an operating infrastructure that supports a diverse set of information support and services at FDA.

IDL Solutions provides information technology services, including strategic enterprise solutions, enterprise networking and infrastructure management, and enterprise application and web solutions.

"We are very pleased to be part of FDA's move towards a modern 21st century infrastructure, and most importantly, we are honored to support FDA's mission," said IDL president and chief executive officer Baly Ambegaoker.

Ed Silva, senior vice president of IDL Solutions, said the company has fewer than 50 employees at its Germantown plant and its plant. The company also has federal offices in Vienna, Va.

The company will will be adding employees to both offices over the next 10 years, but no definite numbers are known at the moment, Silva told SBT this morning.

"We have plenty of open space right now, but this is a pretty large contract, so as we expand over the length of the contract we may be looking for additional space maybe somewhere even other then Germantown to make it easier for people to get to." Silva said. "We have been very focused on health IT, and this contract brings us into the largest health IT initiative in the federal government. There is a lot of work there. They manage all of the food, drug and medical device safety for the U.S., so the programs are very large, and our involvement will bring us even closer to the health IT sector we are focused on."

IDL Solutions is the lead partner of a joint venture between IDL Solutions and Pragmatics Inc. known as IDL-Pragmatics Innovation Partners JV, which led the team of 13 companies to win the ICT-21 contract.

The IDL-Pragmatics team included subcontractors Vangent Inc., INDUS Corp., TechTeam Government Solutions, Inc., Z-Tech/an ICF International Company, Digicon Corp., HCI Action Architectural Consultants, The Stellar Corp., World Wide Technology Inc. and TestPros Inc.

Additional teammates include a large government systems integrator and a major telecommunications provider.

IDL Solutions was a Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce Top Ten Small Business Award winner in 2004 and also was named a Future 50 company by the Council of Small Business Executives (COSBE).