The Denver Post:
A venture that launched 15 years ago in a Colorado Springs basement is now flourishing as one of the state’s fastest-growing aerospace and defense engineering firms.
“A friend asked me ‘why are you doing this for anyone else when you could be doing it for yourself?’ So I did. I started the company with $5,000 in my basement by myself,” said BoecoreCEO Kathy Boe. “My goal was to create a company that engineers and tech professionals wanted to work for, and felt good about where they worked. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Last week, Colorado Springs-based Boecore landed a shared $496 million military contract from the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Army Forces Strategic Command.
Boecore officials said the company is targeting about $100 million to $120 million over the course of the five-year contract.
Boecore employs about 220 engineers, technicians and other aerospace professionals who work on cyber-solutions, space mission engineering, warfighter training and more.
About 73 percent of its workforce — or 160 people — is based in Colorado. The others are split among operations in Huntsville, Ala., Los Angeles, Monterey, Calif., Washington, D.C., and other locations.
The company has added 37 employees to its roster in recent days and plans to hire about 100 more in Colorado over the next year — Boecore’s biggest year yet.
Such explosive growth might be an anomaly, but not unheard of in the aerospace-friendly Colorado business climate, said Vicky Lea, director of Colorado Space Coalition.
“This is an exceptional example, but it does speak to the kind of innovative entrepreneurial environment here in Colorado in the aerospace sector,” Lea said. “While we think of the aerospace industry as the big primes (contractors), we can refer back to the fact that 53 percent of Colorado aerospace companies employ 10 people or less.”
Those small companies have an advantage over the state’s behemoth contractors because they can remain nimble, said Andy Merrit, chief defense industry officer for the Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance.
In short: Those companies that are most flexible are more responsive and are able to better harness the opportunities provided by the ever-expanding commercial space market…
