Ed Sheehan, Jr., president and CEO of Concurrent Technologies Corporation, recently sat down with ExecutiveBiz for the publication’s latest Executive Spotlight interview to discuss the company’s recent Annual Report results as well as its IT modernization efforts and the push for innovative solutions and company growth.
In addition, Sheehan, Jr. also discussed developing energy security solutions for the U.S. Marine Corps, the recent senior leadership additions to CTC and the most significant challenges and goals for the company moving forward with ExecutiveBiz.
“A lot of what we do is focused on the long-term, so it is critical we do the best we can in dealing with the circumstances beyond our control. Thanks to our dedicated employees, leadership team, board members, partners, and clients, I’m confident we can successfully handle any challenges.”
You can read the full Executive Spotlight with Ed Sheehan below:
ExecutiveBiz: Congratulations on Concurrent Technologies Corporation’s recent Annual Report. It has a lot of great information about the company. What can you tell us about the progress that CTC has had across engineering and manufacturing, readiness and training, and IT modernization to drive company growth and lead innovative solutions for your customers?
First, thank you so much for the compliment on our annual report, which we are very proud of. Our Corporate Communications team does an outstanding job year after year putting the information together. We continue to be recognized with marketing awards for that product; thank you for acknowledging it.
Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) and our affiliate Enterprise Ventures Corporation (EVC) continue to do very well in performing critical work for our clients, which has resulted in follow-on engagements and new contract awards. While CTC, a nonprofit organization, specializes in research, development, test, and evaluation; EVC’s mission is to transfer advanced technologies designed and created by others to the marketplace and to deliver high-quality, competitively priced products and services to its clients.
In our engineering and manufacturing area, we’re focused on implementing enhanced processes in additive manufacturing and joining to enable lighter and stronger systems to be fabricated. We have numerous projects in these areas supporting original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as well as our government clients.
We were recently awarded a contract to design and build an electric flightline generator capable of powering legacy and 5th generation fighter aircraft as part of the FlightLine of the Future focus. We’re supporting the Air Force with its goal to replace diesel-powered generators with an electric generator by combining silicon carbide-based power electronics with advanced lithium-ion battery technology.
The change will provide an improved mission range, including reduced fuel consumption, lower lifecycle costs, and an improved work environment for airmen exposed to the exhaust and noise associated with diesel systems.
We’ve also been awarded a contract to develop and evaluate improved small-caliber lightweight ammunition for the U.S. Army. In addition, CTC and EVC have developed proprietary specialty military coatings which increase survivability and enhance lethality. These are some of the technology solutions we continue to innovate, which helps us respond to very challenging client requirements.
We’re focused on advancing our capabilities in areas such as hypersonic technologies, principally through additive manufacturing and materials science. We perform a significant amount of work in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and those capabilities transcend across all of our market portfolios. CTC also maintains a secure classified manufacturing capability, which is a significant discriminator in our marketplace.
Our readiness and training professionals are providing our clients, including U.S. warfighters with relevant analysis, creative solutions, and reliable innovations to improve readiness levels. Our work covers water and energy resilience, safety system effectiveness, infrastructure security, and more.
Our information technology (IT) team has delivered thousands of customized solutions to the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community over the past few decades. Our experts are leading the rapidly evolving IT industry with innovative solutions that improve access to and safeguard data.
Our team is rapidly developing game-changing edge node solutions for the DoD and Intelligence Community that bring current geospatial intelligence data, applications, and services to coalition forces much faster and with less bandwidth.
Cyberattacks and unauthorized access has made cybersecurity a top priority of almost every organization. CTC is providing cybersecurity professional services and advanced IT solutions to both public and private organizations. We’re assisting small- to medium-sized businesses with emerging cyber requirements such as Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). These are just some of the advanced capability areas that we’re focusing on.
In all of our activities, I remain impressed with our employees’ talent and innovation as they create effective and sometimes ground-breaking results. Often, the solutions we’re asked to develop have not been accomplished before, so they’re unique and challenging with regard to science, policy development, and other factors. I applaud the resiliency of our people and their ability to work toward very innovative solutions.
ExecutiveBiz: After receiving recent contracts from the Marine Corps, how is CTC working with the service branch to continue to support and improve its energy program to deliver holistic energy security solutions? In building for resilience, what can you tell us about the different aspects of the Marine Corps’ energy security as well?
CTC supports the Marine Corps energy efforts across their entire enterprise. Each level of its organization, including headquarters, regions, and installations, presents unique challenges to its effort to improve energy security and installation resilience.
For example, the headquarters-level support is focused on integrating policy and program activities to ensure compliance with Congressional and DoD requirements, while helping to align the local and regional activities in the service energy security objectives.
The support also provides the Marine Corps’ regional and installation-level commands with the tools and expertise to reduce the total operating costs and enhance energy security.
In addition, we develop and implement the Marine Corps Installation Energy Security Plan. The IESPs are comprehensive assessments of each installation, the utilities, and energy management programs. They’re critical to identifying and mitigating immediate issues that affect the prevention, survivability, and recovery efforts needed to continue operation if there would be a prolonged power disruption.
Aside from being mandated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Marine Corps IESPs will be used in the development of projects that closely identify the resilience gaps. It’s really a consistent systems engineering process that helps us identify some of the challenges and shortcomings and the solutions to fill those gaps.
CTC supports the development of energy security projects that successfully leverage a combination of third-party financing or leasing mechanisms and the OSD Energy Resilience & Conservation Investment Program to accelerate the delivery of energy resilience.
It takes a lot of coordination, leadership, and integration around a number of different activities to make sure that we have a total comprehensive solution for the Marine Corps.”
ExecutiveBiz: With the expansion of your senior leadership team with the recent additions of Dawn Eilenberger, Josh Salmanson, Cos DiMaggio and others, how would you describe the impact these additions will have on your company culture as well as their influence on the company’s efforts to safeguard U.S. national security and maintain its tech advantage?
The ability to attract individuals with the kind of depth and expertise in these key areas really helps us raise the bar. I think adding board members such as Dawn Eilenberger, who brings 35 years of broad leadership and experience in the Intelligence Community, is going to help us in terms of how we approach the solution development process, how we look at the Intelligence Community at large, and how we handle some of the emerging issues that we need to be getting ahead of.
All CTC and EVC board members continue to add significant value, mentor our technical staff, provide outstanding guidance around governance issues, and help us in business development. I mentioned Dawn’s outstanding capabilities, but we have a number of folks on the CTC and EVC boards who bring similar types of experience across the entire bandwidth of the federal government.
I think our board continues to raise the bar in terms of technical achievements and business growth as well as challenging our employees. Frankly, our impressive boards and organizational leadership are an advantage in our continuing efforts to retain our quality staff and recruit new employees.
We also utilize an outstanding technical advisory board, which I use to help mentor our technical staff as well and to help with solutions development, innovation, and so on. We’ve just added Josh Salmanson and Cos DiMaggio, who have a great deal of experience. Josh has over 25 years of experience in the technology, sales, and business leadership areas; a very successful track record of guiding technology organizations; and hands-on IT solution development, looking at major integration efforts.
That’s the kind of expertise that can be very helpful to a company like CTC. Additionally, Cos has a very strong science and research and development (R&D) background as well as technology transition experience, which is a major part of what we do.
All the knowledge, experience, and expertise our board members bring around the Intelligence Community, R&D, growth initiatives and tech transition helps our company’s overall mission, safeguard our national security, and maintain our technological advantage.
You touched on culture. Culture is really critical. We try to be a true partner and personally invested in the success of our clients. I think that type of focus, that type of culture, helps attract these board members to what we do. I think they also buy into that mentality of better serving our clients.”
ExecutiveBiz: With CTC and EVC coming off a challenging but successful 2021, what are your goals for the year to come and what are the most significant challenges you want to address for your customers and valuable employees as well?
“As we move forward, our goals continue to focus on growth and on R&D. As I mentioned earlier, CTC is an applied research and development organization. We like to look for R&D opportunities that have full lifecycle potential that transition into full-scale product development, sustainment support, and eventually, disposition.
We frequently work with industry partners and EVC, our wholly-owned subsidiary and key technology transition partner, so that some of the results we’ve developed through the applied R&D process can be further transitioned into the government marketplace. We continue to innovate, to create new opportunities, and to meet critical mission requirements.
Operating during the pandemic was a significant challenge, but we had quite a good year. I want to give credit to our employees as they continue to be so resilient and adaptive, working around all of the challenges we faced together.
I also appreciate the flexibility that our clients provided, and I want to thank our board of directors and leadership team, who frequently went above and beyond what was necessary because of the extenuating circumstances.
We have continued to invest in our people, as talent management is so critical today. We have been focusing on training programs for line, program, and project managers because ensuring the most efficient and capable execution of our programs for the benefit of our clients is extremely important to us.
It’s a very tight job market, and the working environment is much different now than it was two years ago. We perform a significant amount of work within the Intelligence Community and there are some additional hiring requirements that are necessary there, so we have brought in additional recruiting talent and we intend to be very aggressive.
From a challenge perspective, there are some supply chain issues, but I would say they’re manageable. I think just staying adaptable and flexible is key. There are also those that are beyond the control of the defense industry and the government contracting marketplace; again, adaptability and flexibility coupled with an honest look toward the future will greatly assist us face some of the challenges we may encounter.
A lot of what we do is focused on the long-term, so it is critical we do the best we can in dealing with the circumstances beyond our control. Thanks to our dedicated employees, leadership team, board members, partners, and clients, I’m confident we can successfully handle any challenges.”