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HAMPTON -- Zel Technologies, a Hampton information-technology
company, beat out the likes of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and IBM on Monday
to land a coveted contract to coordinate up to $25 million worth of new security
improvements at the Virginia Port Authority.
ZelTech is a minority-owned company owned by a retired
Air Force colonel. The company has tapped retired Navy Capt. Joseph F. Bouchard
- who recently stepped down as commander of Norfolk Naval Station - as executive
director of the company's Port Authority contract. A former Coast Guard captain
will be deputy. The contract runs two years, with options on four additional
two-year stints. The 275-employee company normally handles defense-related
technology contracts for the military. It wants to demonstrate its effectiveness
at helping provide security at the Port of Hampton Roads, the country's busiest.
"Clearly, this is an extremely important contract
for us, both for the seriousness of the work involved and for the opportunities
we're going after," said Jack L. Ezzell Jr., ZelTech's president and
founder.
Ezzell said he met Bouchard, who led the Navy base for
three years, at a Hampton Roads Civic Leadership Institute a few years ago
and recently persuaded him to get involved. Beginning in early September,
Bouchard will lead the Port Authority project, with a handful of technical
experts and engineers working under him.
The Port Authority runs three state-owned terminals in
Hampton Roads - Norfolk International Terminals, the Newport News Marine Terminal
and the Portsmouth Marine Terminal. Together, those centers bring in hundreds
of thousands of shipping containers - the boxed containers that can shift
from ships to truck and rail systems - into the United States annually.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, many security experts have warned
about the potential of bombs and chemical weapons being shipped into the country
via containers.
The Port Authority envisions a new system to tie together
information from radiation-detection machines, gamma-ray machines, biometric-identification
cards and other systems. The authority is also about to build a command and
control center, where many of the new systems will be integrated.
But no one at the Port Authority has the technical expertise
to put together such a complicated security system, said Robert R. Merhige
III, the Port Authority's deputy executive director and general counsel.
"I don't have a technical background," Merhige
said. "We have some people who have technical skills but not at the level
we need. This is too serious a thing for us to have done ourselves."
Merhige said ZelTech was selected because of its impeccable
reputation with the Defense Department, the level of highly qualified Ph.D.s
and former military officers on its staff, and its local accessibility.
"You know when you call Jack, you're talking to the
guy that owns this company," Merhige said. "You're talking to the
No. 1 guy, and he will get it done."
Merhige said the fact that ZelTech was minority-owned (Ezzell
is black) didn't factor into the decision but was "icing on the cake."
Port Authority documents soliciting companies to bid on
the work contained an "important notice" - in bold lettering - saying
the authority's goal was for "at least 30 percent of the work" to
be done by a minority-owned, female-owned or small-business enterprise.
Under the initial two-year contract, ZelTech will coordinate
security grants that the Port Authority has so far landed from the federal
government. The Port Authority has $8.3 million to date and intends to spend
more than $25 million on security improvements over the next 10 years.
ZelTech initially proposed running an eight-person staff
from which it would coordinate the work and charge $2.2 million for the first
two years. That amount would include an estimated 26,112 man-hours worked,
at an average of about $86 an hour. That rate includes all wages, salaries,
benefits, insurance, materials and overhead for the work, as well as profit
to ZelTech, Ezzell said.
The man-hours are an estimate, Ezzell said.
He and Merhige vowed that the actual fees to ZelTech would
be lower than $2.2 million, though both declined to give revised estimates.
Merhige said each work order - and the man-hours involved
- would be negotiated individually as the work came up.
It couldn't be immediately determined how much money other
companies would have charged for the work.
Merhige said all companies were in the ballpark of ZelTech's
hourly rate.
But the cost of the bids was only one factor, he said.
"This is life and death," Merhige said.
"Forget going to the lowest bidder. We went with the
company that could do this. And I'm betting my job on it that ZelTech is the
best."
Peter Dujardin can be reached at 247-4749 or by e-mail
at pdujardin@dailypress.com
Copyright (c) 2003, Daily Press
For more information about Zel Technologies, please contact
us as follows:
Zel Technologies LLC (ZelTech)
Attention: Corporate Affairs
54 Old Hampton Lane
Hampton, VA 23669
Telephone: (757) 722-5565
Fax: (757) 722-8516
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