Five Questions With: Peter Smith

Founded in 1975, American Systems is one of the largest employee-owned companies in the United States providing test and evaluation, systems engineering, and technical and managed services to government customers. Peter Smith was recently appointed president and CEO after having increased revenue at the company nearly 50 percent as chief operating officer. A native New Englander, he recently visited the company’s Newport office, where he began his career almost 35 years ago. He spoke with Providence Business News about the company’s strategy and its operations in this area.

PBN: Tell me about your strategy for the company as its new CEO and about its presence in Newport. How long have you been in Newport, in addition to Connecticut?
SMITH:
I was the chief operating officer (COO) prior to becoming the CEO this August, so I’ve had a lot to do with the strategy development of the company, thus far, and I think we are going in the right direction. The capabilities American Systems provides in professional services, human capital services, managed services, design and installation services, and custom solutions across . . . readiness, citizen safety, national security, and acquisition and logistics markets – are what we do well and how we are known. My objective is to reach a broader area of customers, as a prime contractor in areas of national priority.
American Systems has been in Rhode Island supporting the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) since the late 1970s, and we’ve had a big presence in that community throughout that time. In fact, I started my career at American Systems in the Newport office 34 years ago working on submarine systems and technology and have stayed with the company ever since. As far as our presence in Connecticut, we have supported the installation and testing of submarine systems at the Electric Boat facility in Groton. Many of our people continue to move very fluidly across our offices in the New England region.

PBN: How has technology changed your business? Can you give me an example?
SMITH:
Communication technologies – like email, webinar and cloud solutions – have made the exchange of information within the company, and frankly, with our customer, easier and more detailed. This allows us to reach back and leverage our entire workforce of 1,500 across 22 locations to develop solutions no matter where the customer is located geographically.
There have also been tremendous advances in technologies that support the missions of our customer, such as battery technology, advanced sonar and radar processing, and miniaturization in the Navy community. The integration of command and control allowing better control of weapons across platforms is really fascinating. With our range and depth of engineering and technical work across a number of programs, we have a lot of knowledge within the company that helps us support customer innovation.

PBN: What are the advantages of having an employee-owned company?
SMITH:
We are actually coming up on our 25th anniversary as an employee-owned company in 2015. There are about 10,000 employee-owned companies in the US, and we are one of the largest in the country and 100 percent employee-owned.
It is great that two of our major constituencies – shareholders and employees – are one and the same. Our employees-owners understand and appreciate that investing in the business to promote business development has returns in both developing career options and financial returns. Employee ownership also leads to higher quality as our employee-owners realize they are a direct beneficiary of our company’s growth.
The other two major advantages of being privately held and employee-owned are that we can take a long-term view on investing and that we can tout ownership during recruiting and retention efforts. In fact, we are currently pursuing a number of contracts in the New England area that would open additional positions, so anyone interested should visit our career page or contact us on LinkedIn.

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PBN: How is American Systems positioned to be a NUWC prime contractor of choice? Is this a competitive business that you are in? How many other companies provide the same service that you offer?
SMITH:
It is a very competitive environment, and there are a number of companies that compete across one or multiple American Systems capabilities. We recognize that competition is good for our government customer, and we welcome it. We are comfortable partnering with companies in some areas and competing with them in others.
Where we differentiate ourselves is in our commitment to, and understanding of, the mission. We know what’s at stake. For example, cybersecurity has become a top priority for our military. All systems must be protected against cyber attacks that could disable or reduce capability during mission critical operations. We have a cybersecurity group in Newport that supports the NUWC Newport Tactical Cybersecurity Team, initially hardening manned and unmanned Undersea Warfare systems against potential attacks and working to design new systems to be less vulnerable. The success of the NUWC Newport Tactical Cybersecurity Team has led to extending this expertise to a critical Navy Surface program, as well.

PBN: How are you able to support the Navy’s IT capabilities?
SMITH:
First, I’d like to recognize the tremendous work NUWC is doing with its R&D to quickly bring new capabilities to the fleet that meet mission requirements. At American Systems, we work hard to provide additional value in this area with our long-standing tradition of hiring people with a technology as well as an operations background. This allows them to work with their government counterparts to evaluate the context of the technology – how it may be used in the field and how to make it easy for a sailor to use.
To help our customer get the most bang for their buck, we have been paying a lot of attention to introducing adjacent innovations from one platform to another as well as customizing commercial technology you can get off the shelf to meet new requirements and aggressive delivery schedules.
For example, our Newport cybersecurity group is aware of the burden of conducting systems vulnerability testing, a large part of which must be done manually for Linux-based systems. Leveraging training American Systems was able to provide with the assistance of a Rhode Island Governor’s Workforce Board grant, our cybersecurity experts developed our Linux Configuration Evaluation and Remediation Tool intellectual property. While initially used to better support the aforementioned Navy Surface program, NUWC Newport Tactical Cybersecurity Team can now rely on information assurance technicians to confidently conduct vulnerability testing in a third of the time it would take for a skilled Linux information assurance technician to complete these test steps manually.
We are looking forward to continuing to support the government in this and other areas and growing our strong presence in Newport.

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