Mobile's business community got a loud and clear message Thursday from deep space - or at least from Huntsville, which is the next best thing when it comes to getting a shot at NASA contracts.
Dozens of interested business representatives gathered at a NASA Business Forum that offered a chance to hear from some people deeply involved in the business of space. These included officials from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the Stennis Space Center and NASA Shared Services in coastal Mississippi, as well as representatives from Boeing and other prime contractors involved in development of the heavy-lift Space Launch System that will be a key part of exploration missions to the Moon, Mars and possibly beyond.
Those speakers had an appealing message to get across: NASA is committed to handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to small businesses every year, either through direct contracts or to subcontractors working for "the primes."
"The agency and the field centers like Marshall Space Flight Center count on the institutions and the industries around us to provide the people, the expertise and the excellent capabilities and critical skills we need to be successful," Marshall Center Director Todd May told the audience. "Small businesses and entrepreneurs bring new ideas to the table and they make the business of space exploration more innovative and efficient, which is very important to us these days."
May said the Marshall Space Flight Center's data "shows this is more than just a talking point." He said that with an annual budget approaching $3 billion dollars, it spends between $500 million and $600 million a year with small businesses.
That's an investment that "transcends dollars," he said. Among other benefits, it helps companies provide jobs to their communities, and provides opportunities for businesses owned by women, minorities and veterans.
"It's about building bridges between opportunity and potential ... Federal agencies like NASA should be in the business of opening doors for entrepreneurs, not closing them," May said.
Robert Devlin, deputy director of Marshall's center of operations, provided figures showing that for fiscal year 2015, Marshall had a $3.8 billion economic impact on the state and provided 20,000 jobs in Alabama alone. Among the center's priorities, he said, was leading the way "into markets that do not yet exist."
Sharon Cobb, assistant program manager for the Space Launch System (SLS) gave an update on the effort to build the massive rockets that will carry components for future manned missions into space. "It's no longer a paper rocket," she said. "It's happening now."
David Brock, Marshall's small business specialist, laid out some key information for potential business partners "about how you can become a player in the overall mission of NASA."
Every NASA center has a specialist like himself focused on recruiting and developing small business. And they don't simply hope for the best, Brock said: NASA sets specific targets across a range of categories for how much money it wants to spend.
"If you're selling something, there's probably a chance that we're buying something," he said. He said that potential partners need to take an active approach: Among other advice, he encouraged potential suppliers to register with NASA's supplier database, begin marketing efforts early in the process of a competition, pay attention to any requests for information from NASA and attend industry briefings.
He also encouraged interest parties to take advantage of an array of information at a website dedicated specifically to the ins and outs of doing business with NASA.
The theme that it pays for partners to be alert and proactive carried over into a session on "Doing Business with the Primes." Representatives of Teledyne Brown Engineering, The Boeing Co. and Jacobs Engineering Group said the companies have whole departments focused on developing relationships with small businesses, including those who may qualify for special consideration because they're owned by veterans or women or minorities.
However, they said, it's not enough to simply connect with a company's small business liaison, establish that you're a qualified small business, and wait for good things to happen. "As you're pursuing us, always bring us a good business case and a good strategy," said Bradley Bruce, a Huntsville-based small business liaison officer for Boeing. The big companies want to see how a partner can "bring value to us," he said. "We want to bring the best small and diverse businesses to help us" achieve corporate goals, he said.
"Do your research, know where your value is before you come to us," seconded Kristi Julien, also with Boeing. She and others also said it was important for potential partners to do their homework: To know how the prime contractor does business, and what the customer's needs are. "Our expectations are high," Bruce said of Boeing. "We have a very high standard as far as performance and delivery."
Like Brock, the corporate representatives said small businesses should engage early in any given competition, and take simple steps such as registering in the prime contractor's vendor database. He offered some even more fine-grained advice, saying it was a waste to hand out a business cards with blank backs. If that space was used to spell out a company's core capabilities and other key information, he said, small business liaisons like himself would find it handy as a quick reference guide.
The bottom line, he said, was that a good relationship between companies should benefit both partners. To the big companies, that's not an abstract concept, he said, it's a practical matter.
"What you guys bring to us is, you're very agile," Bruce said. That speed can be helpful to a large company that, for all its strengths, may take more time to change directions.
Whether the session leads to new contracts for Mobile-area businesses, or to new ties between Mobile's aerospace sector and Huntsville's, remains to be seen. But one participant - former City Council member Reggie Copeland, representing Turner Supply Co. -- said it was an example of "outstanding" work by the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce.
"It's good for the city and good for the small businesses trying to do business with them," Copeland said, referring to NASA and its prime contractors.