By Geoff Fein
Fredericksburg, Va.-based SimVentions is the driving force behind a plan to develop a technology center bringing together small companies and universities to collaborate on defense contracts, according to a company official.
“The main concept of the Spotsylvania Technology Center (STC) is, let’s pull together industry, academia, and government to solve some of the significant defense and homeland security problems of the day,” Bob Duffy, board member of SimVentions, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“You can’t do it in a box anymore. The days of the government writing requirements documents and going out for RFPs (request for proposals)…having big companies bid on them, [and] eight years later coming back with a system…they are gone,” he added.
The goal of the STC would be to form Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADA) with government facilities, such as Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren, Duffy said.
In fact, earlier this month, Dahlgren and SimVentions entered into a CRADA that will enable collaboration and sharing data rights to design, develop, test, and deliver new open architecture (OA) components and capability to the fleet (Defense Daily, Aug. 25).
To date, SimVentions has formed a collaboration with 15 companies, and by the time the STC is ready to move into the center in about 18 months to two years from now, Duffy hopes to grow that to more than 40 companies that will participate.
The site is expected to open in about 18 months to two years, he added.
“The whole goal is to go there and say to the Navy, ‘don’t be worried about going to a small business and fear that they might not be in business next year.’ We are forming a larger collaboration of companies that will take on the job, [so] that if one of those companies is not around in a year from now, one of the other companies will be able to pick [up the work],” Duffy explained. “We want to be a bunch of small companies that act like a big company.”
Two years ago folks at SimVentions decided that if they wanted to pursue a technology center at some point, they better gain some experience in collaboration.
In 2005, SimVentions, along with five other companies, won a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program Phase I effort.
“It was a PEO Ships SBIR–how do you help the program manager insert technology faster, better, cheaper. [It was] right up our alley with what we were doing with RCIP (rapid capability insertion process). We were one of six recipients of a Phase I SBIR,” Duffy said. “As soon as the SBIR was awarded we started calling all the other companies to say we’d like to collaborate…here is what we are doing in our solution, what are you doing that we might be able to collaborate and delver something better to our customer, particularly if we go into a Phase II together. Two of those five other companies were interested.”
SimVentions along with the other two companies got together and when they wrote the final report, they discussed the collaborative effort and showed the Navy what the collaboration would deliver if the service awarded three Phase II awards, Duffy said.
“They were going to award one Phase II, instead they awarded three. They had another company that had another topic that they felt fit in. We talked to that company and [the Navy] took them to a Phase II. So there were four companies that went to a Phase II that built a product called the Open Architecture Technology Insertion Management Environment. It is the beginning of this management environment for the program managers.”
The program helps integrate schedules, forecast changes in technology so program manager can determine early on how much hardware they are going to have to buy, what the state of sonar technology is going to be, the state of processing technology, and how many processors a program manager is going to need to buy.
“We know the collaboration can work. We know we can bring together companies. Here’s a case where we had four separate contracts, no company was a prime, and just through cooperation between the [companies] and the customers we have been able to pull it together and provide a better product to the Navy,” Duffy said. “We have demonstrated it will work. It will work even better if you have a prime responsible for it all, because they can push it along a little bit better. There were times we lagged because nobody had the power to say, ‘here is what I want you to do.'”
Duffy said the STC concept won’t limit participation to just small businesses.
“We already have General Dynamics as a partner, Teledyne Brown [Engineering], we have interest from SAIC, Lockheed Martin has expressed [interest],” he added. “Right now, for some of the big guys that have a big market share like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, there is a little bit of a resistance still because they are thinking, ‘I am going to be able to build this thing all by myself.'”
But as time goes on, Duffy added, and those companies see how CG(X) is starting to change, as they see they can get capability from small business, and as they move more to the integrator role, they will recognize the role small companies can play.
But Duffy acknowledges small companies would become integrators.
“I don’t ever profess to believe that a single small business, or even a collaboration of small businesses, can integrate a system for CG(X). So we are always going to need the big guys,” he said.
Another positive Duffy sees is that the STC’s location will place it near numerous Army and Navy labs.
And SimVentions has received the support of the State of Virginia, Duffy noted.
The STC is on the state’s top requirements list, he added. “We are rated number six for things [the state would] like to see happen.”
The company is also seeking funding from the federal government for the project.
“Our earmarks request to Congress are very high because they are the dollars we are looking for as being able to help us build the technology center,” he said.
But Duffy wants to make it clear that those funds would not be used to build any of the STC’s buildings. “We will do that with private funds.”
“We are looking for the [earmarks] to fund the companies to build capability for the military, and that will allow us to bring the companies together…in the same venue where we can collaborate,” he added.
The site is expected to break ground and start building in early ’09, Duffy said.
STC will eventually encompass 85 acres with 650,000 square feet of space, he added. “Spotsylvania County has authorized us to build 150,000 square feet. Once the infrastructure is built [they] will allow us to go up to 650,000 square feet.”
Duffy has spoken with NSWC Dahlgren about the possibility of locating lab facilities at STC. He said the Navy lab has bought off “big time”on the technology center.
‘”If we bring in these companies to develop open architecture components, [NSWC Dahlgren] would have a lab here to test those components to a certain level,” Duffy said.