KBR, a global government contractor that provides technology and engineering solutions, won a $229 million recompete contract to develop improvements to the U.S. Army’s CH-47 Chinook fleet.

The work will occur over five years in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of a multiple-award contract (MAC) with the Department of Defense Information Analysis Center (DoDIAC).

Specifically, this contract will support the Cargo Helicopter (CH) Project Management Office (PMO) and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) partners. As a note, the U.S. government approves the company’s FMS partners.

The CH-47 Chinook, a workhorse essential to U.S. Army operations, is used for troop and cargo transport, medical evacuation, search and rescue, disaster relief, and military conflict response.

Mark Kavanaugh, KBR’s Senior Vice President of Defense and Technology Solutions, and Scot Butkis, KBR’s Vice President of Defense and Technology Solutions, sat down with the Huntsville Business Journal for an exclusive deep dive into the company’s recent contract win.

Butkis said a key factor in KBR securing this recompete contract was its proven use of digital engineering to drive cost savings.

“We’ve got the digital engineering framework that allows us to test out, if you will, before these actual fleet tests, hardware tests. We can test out everything digitally, and it increases our ability to be successful within the actual test and save 25-30% cost on the testing element of this contract,” Butkis said.

Kavanaugh echoed Butkis’ explanation of the cost savings KBR provides.

“We help them lower supply chain costs as we do assessments on what it can take to keep the CH-47 flying but at less expense to the U.S. Government,” Kavanaugh said.

When asked how KBR would measure this project’s success, Butkis said it first comes down to calculating how the CH-47 will operate in various situations.

“The success is really measured by improving the performance so you have no gaps in performance, whether that be National Guard or a foreign country or, in a conflict, so that the warfighter actually has no interruption in performance,” Butkis shared.

Butkis further described this as a measure of effectiveness and modernization.

Butkis explained that for this CH-47 contract, KBR can show “…how effective the platform is… in countering whatever threat scenario that it’s put into.”

Butkis said another marker of success for this project is the integration of integrated, interoperable pieces between the U.S. and FMS partners. For example, KBR will work to ensure that these customers “… have the same capability in case we have to go to an area of conflict.”

He continued, “That’s very important, and it’s very difficult to make sure that everybody’s operating and performing at the same level.”

Kavanaugh also shared that KBR typically provides the government with analysis on how best to technologically advance military aircraft fleets.

“They’ll have certain technology milestones that they have to hit, and we assist them on the path that they’ve elected to go forward on to keep the aircraft cutting edge,” Kavanaugh said.

Kavanaugh further explained KBR’s mission in this aspect of the contract.

“We’re a leading-edge technology company, bringing the new technology to the customer as opposed to just manufacturing it,” Kavanaugh said.

KBR’s defense modernization work covers a broad range of platforms for the U.S. Army and its international partners, leveraging their extensive technical expertise and experience across the entire PEO portfolio.

Butkis said KBR’s deep technical expertise, which spans the entire Army aviation PEO, sets the contractor apart from other service providers.

“We’re touching every platform, and that allows us to be able to understand and share that information to help each other across all of the systems in that portfolio,” Butkis said.

According to Butkis, KBR’s success comes from establishing strong trust with its customers in the United States and globally.

“We always deliver. It takes years to build that trust, and not many people have that,” Butkis said.

For Huntsville specifically, Butkis also wanted to emphasize KBR’s high employee retention rates and strong track record of attracting talent to the company.

“Our voluntary turnover is very small, so our retention is very high. And recruiting, we do really well at recruiting because of the nature of this deep technical mission,” Butkis said.