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Firm aims to ‘find a need and fill it'
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JAY FRIESS
Compass Systems COO Frank Deaton, left, and CEO Mark Pinekenstein will be honored at the 2009 Leading Edge Awards as Patuxent Partnership Member Firm of the Year.
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If it feels as though Lexington Park engineering firm Compass Systems exploded onto the Patuxent River Naval Air Station contracting scene in the last few years, it's because it has.
Compass has been around since 1997, but it wasn't until 2005 that the outfit caught fire and saw its growth expand by 327 percent over the last four years.
On June 17, the company's breakout performance will be honored at the 2009 Leading Edge Awards as it is named Patuxent Partnership Member Firm of the Year.
"We are really tickled about that," said Compass CEO Mark Pinekenstein.
Both Pinekenstein and COO Frank Deaton said that the thing they are most proud of in Compass' portfolio of work has been the company's ability to grow from a small bit player to a fully functioning program management contractor in the span of a few years.
"It's a group effort," Deaton said. "We all work together."
"I attribute our growth to our persistence and our personal ethics," Pinekenstein said, noting that customer service is the primary concern. The company mantra, he said, is "find a need and fill it."
"We have been accused of being too responsive," said Deaton with a grin.
Since Pinekenstein and Deaton joined the company in 2005, Compass has used this philosophy to grow from 27 employees to approximately 85 with $20.5 million in revenue.
"We're now a small company on the verge of going to a large business," Deaton said. "Now we're feeling settled in [the infrastructure] we've got and we can take on more."
Pinekenstein said he and Deaton spend most of their time juggling employee benefits to retain and reward their best engineers.
Compass works mainly in avionics, unmanned vehicles and surveillance. The company has employees assisting on three airplane projects and three helicopter projects as well as unmanned drone and surveillance initiatives.
"We've mainly been able to leverage what we do well," Pinekenstein said, explaining that the company sticks to what it knows and creates incremental advances to solve incremental problems.
For example, the company's work in surveillance optics and robotics were merged to create an articulated camera for military humvees. "That's kind of where we come from," Deaton said. "Our work is engineering. … one of the things we hear is, ‘Man, you do a lot for a small company.'"
Pinekenstein said the company's involvement in the Patuxent Partnership has been good for business, and he said it was nice to be recognized by his peers.
"I believe everybody who we work with knows what we're about," Pinekenstein said. "[The award] may give us more positive visibility in the community."
As for the future of Compass, Deaton said he doesn't intend for the company to continue growing at the same rip-roaring rate, but he wouldn't be surprised if it did.
"What we want to do is to continue to support our customers," Pinekenstein said. "As long as we're doing good work, we'll have something to do."
