Bob Kiggans, president of SCRA's federal sector, pointed out the visits followed by contract awards were "not a direct cause-and-effect result. For 15 years, we've had strong relationships with the Navy and the Office of Naval Research and, more recently, with Homeland Security."
Nevertheless, Kiggans noted that, "since the time of those visits, we've booked about $18 million in Navy contracts."
Kiggans said about $13.5 million comes from the national shipbuilding program, in which research and development at the SCRA helps the Navy reduce the cost of both building and maintaining vessels."The Navy gets a lot of leverage out of that because they share the R&D results across all the U.S. Naval shipyards," said Kiggans. "I think we're the only company that has two Centers of Excellence with the
Navy's Office of Naval Research. That's significant."
The remaining $4.5 million is allocated to a variety of projects, "each in the $1 million range," said Mahoney. "We're helping the Navy in its handling of onboard ship materials, increasing operational efficiency."
Mahoney said the contract awards reflected the state's increasing status in Washington.
"When we were driving Admiral Landay back to airport, he said he'd heard a lot from programming executives in Washington about SCRA and he was impressed with what he saw," Mahoney said. "And Admiral Cohen mentioned
working with SCRA in his remarks at the Homeland Security conference. When he was Chief of Naval Research prior to being appointed to Homeland Security, we had a long-standing client relationship with him that we expect to carry over."
Those relationships are paying off in visibility for the state, and SCRA is taking advantage of the opportunity to grow the overall amount of federal research and development in the state, Mahoney said.
"Key operatives in Washington are starting to see South Carolina as a good place to put their research dollars," he said. "The perception in Washington is that you get a very good return on your investment."We have a low-cost manufacturing environment, and we're well known for
our attention to quality of life. We have the research universities working together (through the Innovation Centers Act legislation),
especially with highly acclaimed professors here through the endowed chairs program, and our mindset is toward commercialization of research. Over time, we'll be able to attract more big guns. We're becoming quite
a magnet for research dollars." Mahoney cautioned that despite the optimistic news, there are still
areas for improvement in the state.
"We need the high-speed Internet to move forward," he said. "There's no question that when that is in place, it will create more aggregate federal dollars. The research universities have asked us to follow their lead on this, and we're happy to be in a supporting role in that
project. We see ourselves as both a user and provider for the supercomputing."
Kiggans recommended strengthening connections among the universities."This is not a weakness but an area we can improve," Kiggan said. "I think we can improve on how we work together in the state. Each of the
universities has its own strengths, and if we look at leveraging those
strengths and partnering more, we can do so much more.
"For instance, we have ongoing discussions with (textile firm) Milliken in the upstate, and we're working with MeadWestvaco's R&D group down here," he said. "We're working with the government and the Department of
Defense and the innovative programs they have."
Put all that together with the research universities, Kiggans said, and the state can be a research powerhouse.
Mahoney noted that there is ongoing dialogue with several organizations to explore ways to provide more programs and bigger programs.
"Energy efficiency is one area where SCRA will be an international leader in the next five years," he said. "We're looking at alternative energy, energy efficiency and sustainability." Mahoney said SCRA had been asked by Clemson to provide assistance on its Noisette restoration science project."This is an opportunity to create a leading presence in sustainability,"he said. "North Charleston can be the Silicon Valley of sustainability.
There's a lot of potential there."
(c) 2006 Copyright Setcom Media, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
