Huntington Ingalls hunts for new opportunities with technical solutions division

By Marjorie Censer  / August 16, 2018

When Huntington Ingalls Industries bought Camber in late 2016, it paired the government services company with six other businesses -- from an oil and gas company to its unmanned systems group -- to create a new division called technical solutions.

The other parts of the unit had been acting relatively independently, meaning the newly established group had no shared systems or approaches.

But Andy Green, tapped to lead the organization, said the technical solutions division, which reported 2017 sales of $952 million, has made inroads at uniting its approaches and is starting to see the results of jointly seeking business opportunities.

In an interview with Inside Defense this week, Green said “organizing and integrating” the seven business units that make up his nearly 5,300-employee division was the most significant challenge.

"Day one, we were a division in name only," he said. "It's a blessing in that . . . you've got a blank sheet of paper -- you can do things the way you want to do them. The curse is you've got no real established way of doing anything."

Green said he started by organizing the seven businesses into four capability-based groups. The first group was called fleet support and includes AMSEC and Huntington Ingalls' unmanned systems business, among others. The second, known as integrated mission solutions, includes the Camber business, while the third -- the nuclear and environmental group -- is comprised of SN3 and Newport News Industrial. The final group, known as the oil and gas group, includes UniversalPegasus, which does oil and gas pipeline survey and engineering.

Green said the group is now beginning to share common systems.

"We just recently got everyone on the same IT system, we're in the process of migrating to a common Costpoint [accounting] system," he said. "Earlier this year, we got all employees onto a common benefits platform. We're right now in the evaluation stage for a common human capital management information system."

But, beyond unifying its systems, he said the division is seeking ways to grow its portfolio through collaboration.

"When we talk about the benefits of standing up this division, we've already pursued and won and executed business together that we would not have pursued independently," Green said. "Some of these opportunities would have just fallen through the cracks because one group or the other wouldn't have had the full capability to do it."

As an example, he noted that Huntington Ingalls is partnering with Boeing to pursue the Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle program. Within the technical solutions division, the unmanned business inside its fleet support group is working on the effort, as is Newport News Industrial, within the nuclear and environmental group.

"Newport News Industrial -- XLUUV never would have shown up on its radar screen, and . . . [the unmanned business doesn't] have fabrication capability that would even come close to being able to support something like XLUUV," Green said. "That was a great example of marrying those two capabilities."

He also said the division is combining capabilities from Camber and AMSEC to pursue Navy training programs. Additionally, his organization has expertise in data analytics from the Camber business, which does analytical work for the U.S. Postal Service. Now, Newport News Shipbuilding has asked for the technical solutions division to send data scientists to help the shipyard with a data analytics program.

Green said his group holds monthly meetings with the heads of all four organizations to review the programs they're pursuing and consider opportunities to work together. He said he's established incentives for mid- and high-level leaders to encourage collaboration.

Additionally, Green said the technical solutions business is open to more acquisitions.

"If we find an acquisition that can help us fill capability gaps or can help us accelerate growth in a particular market or with a particular customer and we can do it in a way that adds value, meets the HII criteria for acquisitions, then we can do that," Green told Inside Defense.

He said he sees significant opportunity in his group, given its much larger group of customers.

Before acquiring Camber, Huntington Ingalls leaders "said, 'OK, we do a lot of things well, but almost everything we do is for the Navy and the Coast Guard,'" Green recalled. "How can we take what we do and reach out to other customers?"