After protests, Pond gets contract to provide security at Army posts in Germany

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — After official protests, the U.S. Army has re-awarded a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract for security at posts in Germany to the company already doing the job.

The new contract will keep Pond Security Service in place for up to four more years, barring additional protests.

The decision dealt another blow to German security firm Sicherheit Nord, which earlier this year was awarded, and then stripped of, the contract before starting the job. Sven Wackerhagen, the company’s managing director, declined to comment on the Army’s decision.

The award may finally end a protracted contracting process that began over a year ago.

“Obviously, it’s a good decision for us,” Chad Geier, Pond’s chief of staff, said.

Pond has provided security for the U.S. Army in Germany since the early 1980s, when Daniel Pond, a former U.S. soldier, started the firm that bears his name. Pond’s early Army contracts were small, but in 2008, the company was awarded the Army’s first Germany-wide security contract. Pond has essentially served as the Army’s sole contract security service in Germany since late 2007, when another security provider was terminated in the midst of a probe over false billing.

Pond provides roughly 1,600 personnel to guard Army posts in Germany, Geier said, and that’s about the number the company expects to employ through the four-year contract.

The new award, posted Friday on the U.S. government’s Federal Business Opportunities website, includes a one-year base contract and three one-year options, Geier said. The full contract is valued at more than $334 million and begins Jan. 1. Pond is now operating under a $69 million bridge contract negotiated in May.

It was not immediately clear if Sicherheit Nord or any other firm plans to protest the contract.

Geier said there “is a timeframe that people will have to … request a debriefing, and then they have a certain amount of time in which they would have to decide whether they wish to protest or not.”

Installation Management Command-Europe, which oversees the guard contract, had not responded to questions in time to meet Stars and Stripes’ deadline.

millham.matthew@stripes.com

Twitter: @MattMillham