Bob Pragada
President & Chief Operating Officer at Jacobs Solutions
Thank you, Steve. Moving on to Slide 7 to review Critical Mission Solutions. During the fourth quarter, our CMS business continued its strong performance. Total CMS backlog increased 16% year-over-year, 7% on a pro forma basis to $10.6 billion driven by a strategic new wins in cyber and intel and nuclear and remediation. Our CMS strategy is focused on creating recurring revenue growth and margin expansion by offering technology-enabled solutions aligned to critical national priorities. Three market trends that we see offering continued strong growth include, cyber, commercial space and 5G technology for national security.
Beginning with cyber and intelligence, we are seeing several major emerging threats to national security. First, cyber attacks on mission critical infrastructure, which are even more stealth and as disruptive as a traditional attack. Second, the speed and complexity of near-peer threats, which requires real-time coordination between space and other domains as a severity of nation state sponsored attacks continues to increase. And third, the adoption of a data-intensive AI-based applications are dramatically increasing the need for real-time data security and integrity. The funding for addressing these threats are partially reflected in the unclassified federal government spending on cyber in FY '22, which is expected to be over $20 billion, up 10% from prior year. Additionally, we expect to spending within classified budgets to be up higher.
During the quarter, we are awarded a $300 million, seven year contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to modernize the NGA's ability to rapidly gain and share insights from cross domain inventory, including top secret data classification. And within the classified budget, we were awarded $170 million five year new contract to develop highly secure and hardened software application that are leveraging the latest advances in AI and machine learning.
We recently closed the BlackLynx acquisition, which provides software-enabled solutions for automating the collection of data at the edge and quickly gaining insights into extremely large volumes of structured and unstructured data. Our strong presence across the DoD and intelligence community as well as our digital enablement center will provide the escape velocity for BlackLynx to commercialize and scale their solutions resulting in highly profitable recurring revenue. We also recently announced a strategic investment and distribution agreement with HawkEye 360, which will enhance our digital intelligence suite of technologies with their RF, spectrum analytics and collection automation offering.
Moving on to space. With a significant amount of capital being infused into the commercial space companies, the affordability of space tourism is becoming a reality as well as other emerging opportunities such as acceleration of satellite-based technologies and the need to understand the impact of space debris. Today we support commercial space companies with manufacturing process optimization, system and subsystem prototype work and test facility studies and projects. As commercial space matures, we are positioning our solutions for these emerging opportunities.
During the quarter, we were notified of a significant increase to the ceiling of our contract in Marshall Space Flight Center that also supports Artemis and SLS. The U.S. Space Force selected Jacobs for a five year contract to provide software and system support for its Patriot Excalibur system, which coordinates to scheduling, training and status of U.S. Space Force aircraft.
Finally, our telecom business had a strong quarter. And we see the rollout of 5G investment from clients like AT&T, Verizon, DIRECTV, T-Mobile and Dish Network accelerating in 2022 and beyond. In addition, the new Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill includes $2.5 billion for 5G rollout at U.S. military bases, and the DoD is investing heavily in 5G technology in support of national priorities. In summary, we continue to see strong demand for our solutions in 2022. The CMS sales pipeline remains robust with the next 18 month qualified new business opportunities remaining above $30 billion, which includes $10 billion in source selection with an increasing margin profile.
Now on to Slide 8, I'll discuss our People & Places Solutions business. We finished the year with strong financial performance with the year-over-year backlog growth of 7% and annual net revenue growth. I'll discuss our results across the major themes of climate response, pandemic solutions, infrastructure modernization and digitization.
Starting with climate response. As the top-ranked global environmental consulting firm, Jacobs is leading the efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate emergency, advanced transition to a clean energy net zero economy and rapidly respond to natural disasters. This quarter, Jacobs is awarded a multi-year contract by the U.S. Army's Engineer Research and Development Center to integrate nature-based solutions that grow climate resilience across defense department facilities.
Jacobs has recently been selected to reimagine New York's Rikers Island, taking the site through a full community revitalization with an equitable resilient multi-use approach incorporating our innovative social value analysis. As the first phase in a 20-year program across the entire city, Jacobs' plan will consolidate four aging wastewater facilities into a state of the art 1 billion gallon per day water resource recovery facility that includes the renewable energy hub.
In the transportation market, our specialists have pioneered advanced charging technology that enables clients to transition to decarbonized operation, a key focus of economic stimulus packages. Our transit team continues to win contracts that support clients with assets, operational and technology shifts towards green fleets. For example, we recently won and commenced a hydrogen rail facility study with Caltrans. And our long-term work with Brisbane Metro continues to showcase cutting-edge green transit solution.
With exponential growth forecasted in the electric vehicle market, Jacobs has become the go-to-firm to support leading EV battery and vehicle manufacturing companies globally. We've doubled our EV book of business in the past year and are forecasting continued growth. We also announced a strategic partnership and investment in Microgrid Labs, a provider of commercial fleet electrification and infrastructure solutions, including their proprietary SaaS platform.
The green economy transition is driving increased investments in hydrogen and renewables. And our team is delivering diverse solutions for a range of clients from our participation in the Bacton Energy Hub Consortium in the U.K. to energy transmission plans for a potential offshore wind development in the U.S. and additional contracts with Iberdrola's Renewables Avonlie Solar Farm and the Swanbank waste to energy facility in Australia.
Moving on to the theme of pandemic response. With ongoing impact to the supply chain, health systems and semiconductor chip shortage, Jacobs is gaining momentum with multi-year backlog across sectors with new wins in biopharma such as the next phase of a new $2 billion biotechnology facility. Jacobs has successfully won several health opportunities in the U.S., Europe and Australia as they rethink pandemic response operations. The most significant aspect of the global supply chain disruption involves semiconductor shortages.
As the world's leading technical services provider to the semiconductor industry, we are poised for significant growth in the electronic sector this year and expect our electronics business to further accelerate over the next several years. In fact, Jacobs is engineering several major investments for large chip manufacturers. Projects like Intel's New Arizona Fab, which Jacobs is designing, are scheduled to be fully operational in 2024. The new fab will manufacture Intel's most advanced process technology and represents the largest private investment in Arizona's history.
Interconnected with climate response, pandemic solutions, infrastructure modernization and digital transformation are leading to long-term transformative growth with significant wins across all markets. Globally, we are continuing to win pioneering transportation projects across all sectors and modes. In highways, we were recently selected for transport for New South Wales along with consortium partners to undertake the $1.2 billion Warringah Freeway upgrade project to accommodate a third road crossing Sydney Harbour.
In Ports and Maritime, we won the sustainable ports design and program management for King Abdul Aziz Port in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. And in air transportation, we were selected as the integrated program manager for the Solidarity Transport Hub in Poland, a greenfield airport in multimodal, including a high-speed rail network with an initial planned capacity of 45 million passengers. The program is of national significance. It will become the benchmark for zero carbon delivery and be a sustainable transportation platform for Eastern Europe's future travel demand.
Our longstanding relationships and existing framework agreements supported major wins with U.S. State Department of Transportation and Transport for London, emphasizing our market leading position for solving our clients' most complex transportation challenges. In summary, we see continued investment across the P&PS client sectors. We are already experiencing exciting global wins in the first quarter of our new fiscal year, indicating that we are well positioned to develop and deliver unmatched value and capability to our clients as investment momentum builds from the U.S. Infrastructure Act and other economic stimulus.
Turning to PA Consulting on Slide 9. As Steve mentioned, PA continues to exceed expectations, supported by an extension of consultative service to U.K.'s National Health Service, PA's efforts have extended into longer term vaccine deployment, testing trace and future pandemic preparedness planning. Additionally, PA growth is being accentuated by recent digital solution wins for confidential U.S. biopharmaceutical clients in the areas of cell and gene therapy and next generation patient care model.
We continue to progress our synergy growth and long-term collaboration. The Jacobs' PA team were recently awarded a biotechnology manufacturing plant expansion to provide an end-to-end lifecycle solution incorporating critical digitize clinical trial information into the process design and facility layout. Additionally, we continue to receive Joint Strategic Consultancy award in the transportation sector globally. I look forward to our continued success with collaborative and integrated offerings to our customers.
At COP26, PA displayed its deep ESG expertise and successfully unveiled its innovative EV battery charging technology, ChargePoint. Further, PA gained -- PA received industry recognition for their jointly developed COVID-19 awareness and situational intelligence tool with Unilever. The business exceeded current expectation -- current expansion targets for the year and is well positioned for continued out-year growth.
I will now turn it over to Kevin.
