Summer Myatt
Executive Mosaic is pleased to recognize John Heneghan, president of ECS Federal, as a 2023 Wash100 Award winner. Heneghan earned this year’s award because of his efforts to spearhead new growth, expand public sector offerings and steer ECS’ company strategy over the last year.
Heneghan’s 2023 win marks his second consecutive year being named to the highly-selective annual list of the top 100 “executives of consequence” across the vital government contracting ecosystem.
You can vote for John Heneghan as your favorite Wash100 winner in Executive Mosaic’s 2023 popular vote competition! Visit Wash100.com to place your vote — voting is open until April 28.
Heneghan joined ECS in 2017 as vice president of enterprise solutions, and he was elevated to the role of chief operating officer at the start of 2021; one year later, Heneghan was tapped to lead the company as president.
Over the span of Heneghan’s five and a half years thus far at ECS, he has overseen six acquisitions, expanding the company’s revenues to over $1 billion and diversifying its portfolio of solutions.
ECS’ most recent growth effort came with the acquisition of Iron Vine Security by ASGN, the parent company of ECS, in October 2022. The deal expanded ECS’ cybersecurity offerings in the government health market and added 230 employees to the ECS enterprise.
“By combining and expanding our next-gen cybersecurity solutions and talented workforce, we strengthen our ability to deliver innovative solutions that protect our nation’s most critical resources and move our customers’ missions forward,” commented Heneghan on the transaction.
The company’s cybersecurity portfolio saw even further growth with ECS’ $430 million recompete win from the U.S. Army Cyber Command in November.
Under the contract, ECS was tapped to support the next iteration of the Army Endpoint Security Solution, or AESS, platform. Heneghan said “AESS 2.0 will not only improve the security of Army networks, but also enhance the Army’s threat intelligence capabilities” by enabling integration with data platforms across the DOD enterprise.
ECS has also focused on its AI offerings over the past year. According to data from fiscal years 2019 to 2021, ECS Federal is the top contractor providing AI solutions to the Department of Defense. Notably, the company has served as the primary contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Project Maven since 2017.
“The advancements are incredible,” Heneghan said of AI in an exclusive interview with ExecutiveBiz. “I believe that we are only at the beginning of the AI/ML journey. I am excited about the impact this technology is already having in supporting our customers’ missions. ECS is at the front of this technology curve, having supported the development of key AI/ML solutions for over five years.”
In his conversation with ExecutiveBiz, Heneghan also called out the critical importance of being able to understand and harness insights from the massive amounts of data that federal agencies are seeing today.
Heneghan highlighted that ECS deploys AI/ML solutions to “identify and classify terrain vehicles, boats and aircraft types, uniforms, and various weapons and weapons systems from satellite data, camera and video feeds, drone feeds, sensor data, and PAI in order to provide invaluable and actionable data regarding everything from force movements and capabilities, damage and lethality assessments, and war crime forensics.”
In November, ECS was selected to lead data migration efforts for the Internal Revenue Service under a two-year, $26 million contract. The contract is part of the IRS’ larger goal of modernizing the agency, standardizing data and improving cybersecurity. As part of the effort, ECS has been tasked with transitioning IRS forms and workflows to an online document management suite and redesigning legacy applications that cannot be migrated to a digital platform.
As ECS continues to expand its offerings and its footprint in the GovCon market, John Heneghan will be a key figure to watch in 2023. Executive Mosaic congratulates John Heneghan and ECS Federal on their 2023 Wash100 Award.
