How does one turn a company that has its origins in a basement in Bel Air into a multimillion-dollar engineering firm? Survivability engineer James B. Foulk, president and co-founder of the Harford County-based SURVICE Engineering Company in Belcamp, has the answer.
SURVICE, a military contractor that specializes in engineering the tools of war so they are safer for soldiers, has stepped to the forefront of a branch of engineering that Foulk and his colleagues helped create: survivability.
“Everything we do is related to systems engineering,” Foulk said. “We try to eliminate problems with systems,” or pieces of military hardware, like a tank or aircraft.
Given the sensitive nature of SURVICE?s business, often working with high-tech equipment developed for all branches of the military, Foulk is reluctant to go into to much detail as to what SURVICE does, but the goal is to bring the nation?s military veterans home safely.
As an example, the U.S. Army will contract SURVICE to work with an M1-A Abrams tank. SURVICE engineers will go into the field and analyze the tank using a Vulcan 3-D laser sensor, which maps its interior and exterior, and then SURVICE begins the process of reverse engineering to make the tank safer. A satellite data repository for the Department of Defense?s Survivability/Vulnerability Information Analysis Center, a library that complies studies conducted on military equipment, is also housed at SURVICE?s Belcamp location.
“Most every one of the systems you see in Iraq right now, we have had a hand in improving their survivability,” Foulk said
SURVICE has seen some lean times, especially during military spending cutbacks in the 1990s. But Foulk and his SURVICE colleagues have grown the company from a two-man operation started in a basement in Bel Air in 1981 to build a multimillion-dollar firm that is headquartered in the Water?s Edgeindustrial complex in Belcamp, and has satellite offices around the nation.
Part of SURVICE?s ability to survive can be credited to its participation in the federal Small Business Innovation Research Program, which allows the company to make use of grants from government agencies.
“He is a guy that has vision and insight,” Harford County developer Clark Turner said of Foulk,, whom he nominated for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Survivability Award. “They were before the BRAC [military base realignment] wave, and they were making this county a tech county before it was even thought of.”
CONTACT SURVICE
» 4695 Millennium Drive in Belcamp in the Water?s Edge industrial complex
» 410-273-7722
» www.survice.com
» About 100 engineers, computer scientists, and technical and support personnel work out of SURVICE?s Belcamp headquarters.
