The Office of Personnel Management is moving closer to the launch of its new security clearance agency.

On Monday OPM announced four indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract awards for work with the National Background Investigations Bureau.

The companies are CACI Premier Technology, Keypoint Government Solutions, CSRA LLC and Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services. Each contract includes a guaranteed minimum of $1 million per vendor.

“I look forward to continuing our relationship with CACI and Keypoint, and to partnering with CSRA and Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services,” OPM acting Director Beth Cobert said in a statement. “These companies will work in coordination with OPM federal investigators in providing this critical function of conducting hundreds of thousands of background investigations for federal agencies annually.”

CACI and Keypoint will continue to help OPM transition from the Federal Investigative Services to the NBIB, while CSRA and Securitas could start work by Dec. 1, the agency said.

OPM said more information about the bureau is being released in the coming weeks.

OPM received four bids for the work and all were accepted.

Each contract has a five-year performance period, and OPM said contract amounts above $1 million are based “on the amount of workload each contractor is assigned and completed during the contracts performance period.”

“This award also increases the industry base for performing investigative fieldwork and will allow OPM to work with the contractors over time to increase capacity and enhance the service delivered to our agency customers,” OPM said in the statement.

The announcement is a step forward in standing up the bureau, which OPM said is scheduled for the first week of October.

Congress is closely monitoring the bureau’s launch. In late August, Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), sent a letter to Cobert asking her for a second time for answers about the NBIB’s status and structure.

OPM announced in January its plans to stand up the new agency and hire 400 more background check investigators for agencies with the highest demand for security clearances.

OPM handles about 95 percent of federal background checks.

The number of overdue reinvestigations doubled over the course of fiscal 2015, according to a first-quarter update to Performance.gov. The Federal Investigative Services ended the year with 8,076 overdue investigations in its backlog, compared with 3,998 cases at the start of 2015.

The agency in March named James Onusko as the NBIB transition leader.

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