Under contract

• A German office within the State Department is buying up to 60
armored vehicles from BMW to be used in diplomatic missions. According
to documents, only three German manufacturers — Audi, BMW or Daimler —
were eligible for the award. BMW won the contract, worth up to $22.5
million, on Tuesday.

The office needs the foreign-made cars, State says in contract documents, because U.S. vehicles “present a vulnerability as they are readily identifiable as ‘American-made’ and are considered a high-value target of terrorist activities in various parts of the world.”

{mosads}• The State Department will build a new office for the American Institute in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Branch, a nonprofit corporation based in Virginia that manages U.S. programs and relations with the country. The new building will cost almost $2.5 million. It receives a majority of its funding and guidance from the State department. The Kaohsiung office “handles local commercial promotion, consular services, information and cultural work,” according to the institute’s website.

• The Defense Department is spending more than $2.1 million on research and development of products that can detect bulk amounts of explosives, even if they are contained in mud, water or flesh — a feat not yet possible without actually touching the objects, the solicitation documents say. This week, the contract was awarded to NIITEK, a Virginia-based defense technology company. Since February, however, five others have received contracts under the same purpose — the University of Arizona, Stanford University, BAE Systems, Northeastern University and Quasar Federal Systems — for varying amounts.

• The Army National Guard spent nearly $90,000 for recruiting advertising in New Mexico and Texas. The New Mexico bureau awarded sign company Esco Manufacturing Co. a contract worth more than $21,000 for “recruiting storefront signs.” The office in Texas also gave a nearly $69,000 contract to the Michigan-based IT company Gravity Solutions for “marketing inflatables.”

•The Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $1.7 million contract to the German IT company Protec GmbH to design, build and install a “fully functioning fire alarm call center” that can monitor 11 military bases around Kaiserslautern, Germany. The bases consist of about 2,000 buildings total.

Contract information compiled from General Services Administration data and government press releases. Send announcements about government contracts to mwilson@digital-staging.thehill.com.