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.