|
Securing
the homeland
Camber Corp., which has been part
of the booming industry in Hawaii,
will participate in the Asia-Pacific
Homeland Security Summit &
Exposition later this month
Five years ago, Lisle Brook retired from the Army with the rank of colonel and opened a one-person branch office of the Camber Corp. in Honolulu.
Now the Camber office, which provides consulting expertise related to homeland security, has 50 employees in Hawaii and another 10 under its auspices on the mainland. Earlier this year, Camber expanded into new office space downtown and expects to have upward of 100 employees by 2007, Brook said.
That kind of growth illustrates the trend since 9/11: Homeland security has become a vibrant industry in Hawaii, just as it has elsewhere.
Later this month, Honolulu will become a center for homeland security in the Pacific, and a showcase for consulting firms, as Honolulu hosts the Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit & Exposition on Sept. 20-23. The event is expected to attract 700 to 1,000 participants from more than 40 countries, said Ed Teixeira, vice director of the Hawaii Department of Civil Defense, which is organizing the event.
Camber is hardly the only firm doing security consulting in Honolulu. Firms such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Science Applications International Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp. are among the 30 consulting firms, large and small, doing business here, said Montie Hess, a former Army colonel who is now business development and marketing director of Camber's Hawaii office.
Hawaii's role as the U.S. gateway to Asia has led to an influx of homeland security consulting firms. Above, Camber Corp. executives Monte Hess, left, business development and marketing director, and Lisle Brook, director and operations manager for Asia Pacific.
"It's the most forward-deployed state in the union," Hess said. "It sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii is very vital to the security interests of the US and its economic partners, and that's why there's a large military force here."
Camber has sought to distinguish itself from the pack of security consultants the old- fashioned way: By hiring the best people it can find to serve customers, most of whom are U.S. military agencies, and creating an esprit de corps guided by an overriding mission to exceed expectations. It's an ethos that pervades the company, down to V. Mikelle Hunt, the office's administrative specialist who does everything from answering the phone to assisting in preparing contract proposals.
Adding to the sense of common purpose, Camber is employee-owned, which means that even the lowest-level employee has a financial stake in the company's success. It also doesn't hurt that about 95 percent of the Honolulu office's employees are former military personnel, many of whom have ties to Hawaii.
"When I say tied to Hawaii, it means tied to the Asia-Pacific, which means they understand how the Asia-Pacific operates, and that's very valuable to our customers," Hess said.
Getting a sense of the company's values is much easier than getting details of what, precisely, it does. In general, Hess said, Camber provides training and expertise in four main fields: Military readiness; anti-terrorism, which involves advising people on how to protect themselves from terrorist attacks; critical infrastructure protection, which involves protecting military installations; and counter-terrorism, which means helping identify and eliminate terrorist threats overseas.
When asked for even vague examples that could illustrate such work, Hess declined to elaborate with a decisiveness befitting a special forces combat veteran.
Such details, Hess said, weren't important.
Carl Springer, another retired Army colonel, provided some detail.
Springer is overseeing development of a Web-based system on the military's classified Internet that will allow the various armed services to work together on joint operations. In addition to developing the system, Camber is training military personnel on how to use it. The contract is worth $6.5 million, Springer said.
As for further quantifying Camber's business in Honolulu, Hess declined to share revenue numbers but said the office's 12 contracts were robust enough to keep 60 people busy. And the firm is angling for more. Although most of its contracts are with the U.S. military, Hess said the office does some work for private clients and is hoping to land work with the state of Hawaii to provide consulting expertise to deal with security issues on the islands.
And that means a constant need for more people -- not just with military backgrounds, but also computer programmers, information systems experts and finance and accounting types. Indeed, Hess said the company is now searching for a business manager, preferably someone with an accounting or project management background who lives in Hawaii.
"We're going to do more work," Hess said. "And we're always looking for more talent."
Beyond that immediate opening, Hess said, the office does not have precise short-term hiring goals.
"We don't have plans for numbers," he said. "We always plan to hire. We will hire people that we need and people that we anticipate needing."
In the end, Hess said, the right person is as important as skills.
"The men and women we look for are mature, multitalented, people who can help (clients) think through the complexities of today's world," Hess said. "It's a matter of bringing the right character to the problem."
For Teixeira, this sort of thing is good news, not only for security, but also for economic development. Although Camber is headquartered in Huntsville, Ala., the jobs created by its local office clearly benefits the local economy, Teixeira said.
Nonetheless, he said, there's work to be done to grow businesses. And Teixeira hopes the upcoming summit will provide an opportunity to do that.
After 9/11, Teixeira said, the "faucets were turned on" for homeland security funding, and the state of Hawaii has received more than $70 million since then. Much of that has been allocated to counties, he said, leaving a relatively small amount under the state's control.
Furthermore, he said, the state must award its contracts according to strict criteria. The result, he said, is that smaller companies based in Hawaii have not benefited as much as they might have.
"We have looked for out local companies to benefit from the Homeland Security Summit," he said. "And clearly we have some work to do."
E-mail to Business Desk
[News] [Business] [Features] [Sports] [Editorial] [Do It Electric!]
[Classified Ads] [Search] [Subscribe] [Info] [Letter to Editor]
[Feedback]
