Published in The Gazette | August 16, 2012 | Written by Wayne Heilman
Image by Christian Murdock of The Gazette Shawnee Huckstep, CEO of TechWise, is pictured in her downtown Colorado Springs office on Wednesday. The local company has won $26 million in training program development contracts and contract renewals with the Air Force, Army and the United Arab Emirates during the past year.
It’s been a good year for TechWise.
The Colorado Springs-based company has won $26 million in training program development contracts and contract renewals with the Air Force, Army and the government of the United Arab Emirates during the past year, allowing it to double its staff to nearly 200 employees.
About 70 of the 100 employees that were added work in the company’s offices in Dubai, where they are helping the United Arab Emirates government design training programs for military, homeland security and emergency preparedness, said TechWise CEO Shawnee Huckstep. The other 30 new hires are working on either new or renewed contracts for military training development, logistics and facility support contracts at Peterson and Schriever Air Force bases near Colorado Springs, Fort Benning in Georgia and Fort Sill in Oklahoma, she said.
The expansion represents a major turnaround for TechWise, which cut its 250-person staff in half in 2010 as its military customers shifted work from contractors to their staff as part of a Department of Defense initiative to reduce spending on outside contractors by 30 percent. Under the 2009 initiative, the department had planned to shift 33,000 contractors to civil-service positions by 2015 to free up funding for ships, fighters and weapons systems. But the plan was dropped a year later when it failed to produce the anticipated savings.
Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/past-143252-springs-staff.html#ixzz23pw0GIqd
