Firm plays David, wins Goliath contract

Waldorf business gets chunk of $16.4 billion U.S. Army project

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by EMILY BARNES Charles Adams, president and CEO of Adams Communication and Engineering Technology, at his Waldorf office. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Claudine Adams

Charles and Claudine Adams' company is about to become bigger than they or anyone else ever thought it would be.

The Waldorf information technology and systems engineering firm, Adams Communications and Engineering Technology, recently won a piece of a five-year, $16.4 billion Army contract that stacks them next to giant companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Computer Sciences Corporation, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Raytheon, which also won awards. The two small awardees, ACET and New Jersey-based R4 Inc., will divvy up a 27 percent "floor,"of the awards, according to contract project officer Dwayne Terry.

As a result, the company's new venture could allow ACET to grow from 60 to 1,000 permanent employees and its annual revenue from $10 million to $400 million in just a few years.

It took two years of ferocious networking on Claudine's part to learn the ropes of snagging a huge project like the Army's Rapid Response, Third Generation (which goes by the Star Wars-inspired acronym R2-3G). She traveled to Fort Monmouth, N.J., which is home to the Army Communications-Electronics Command, or CECOM, which administers the contract. She shook a lot of hands and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and training to get in a position to submit a bid for the job.

"It was very complex," Charles said.

R2-3G provides a streamlined task order process that allows agencies to obtain urgent contractor services in about 45 days, Claudine said. That's "unheard of" in the government world, in which it typically takes one or two years to fulfill work orders.

"The main purpose of this is to support the war fighter. The war fighter can't wait two years," she said.

The Adamses and their team had spent 80 percent of her time for the last year on the written proposal and building partner relationships with about 45 subcontractors that will help get work finished at the drop of a hat (there will be about 300 total task orders annually)."There were a lot of naysayers who didn't think we could do it," Claudine, who Charles calls "the maverick," said. "The significance of the win was we were the outsiders."

CECOM will move a lot of its operations to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland over the next few years as part of the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure process, the Adamses said, and ACET will open an office in Aberdeen, where it will base its R2-3G operations.

Industry sectors to be served by R2-3G-contracted companies include technology insertion, system integration and installation, fabrication and prototype construction, testing and certification, studies and analyses, logistic support, and training and engineering support that includes re-engineering and reverse engineering, according to a CECOM statement.

"The fact they are a small business, and they put together a good proposal," won the company the award. Terry said.

The Adamses' Charles County roots sprouted in 1987 when they moved to Waldorf from Philadelphia to take advantage of opportunities in the defense business world. Charles had served in the military and when he got out came to the Washington, D.C., area to work for various intelligence and software engineering firms before he founded ACET in 1999. Friends thought the new business endeavor was too risky to become partners, Charles said. But within a year, Adams had 10 employees, some specialized intelligence employees with top secret security clearances who worked at clients' locations. He obtained contracts through connections he made at his former jobs.

Six years ago, the company got its first "big break" with more work that helped it grow to about 35 employees. Then there was enough revenue to start growing the business. Claudine, formerly a Xerox executive, came on board with the company. In 2006, ACET opened a Reston, Va., office. Its headquarters moved into its 7,000-square-foot space on Old Washington Road.

Despite its steady growth, which will soon become more rapid, Sharon Pellecchia, a finance officer with ACET for more than six years, said ACET remains a homegrown, family-owned company.

"It's been great riding on the coattails ... they really care about their employees. They work hard and they're always trying to do the right thing," she said.

The R2-3G contract is currently being protested by bidders who lost out on the recompete contract (which means that contractors formerly awarded the jobs had to compete again when it was renewed), Claudine said. Freedom of Information Act rules do not require the federal government to release the names of companies who bid and lost, but incumbents on the former, similar contract included Annapolis-based ARINC and Alexandria, Va.-based VSE Corporation.

ACET will go after another multibillion-dollar Army contract later this year, Charles said, which — dreaming big — could allow the company to expand to 2,000 employees worldwide. But for now, Adams is carefully planning the company's growth and reflecting on its journey.

"It's a Cinderella story ... now we're invited to the table with the big boys," he said. "This will give us the confidence to go after bigger prey."

kkulp@somdnews.com