We recently had the opportunity to interview Steve Tanner, Customer Business Manager for Honeywell. Honeywell manages the Department of Energy’s Kansas City National Security Campus. Learn more about the 4500 person campus and its mission work:
Q: Tell me a bit about the Kansas City National Security Campus and what makes it unique in the landscape of defense-related solutions.
ST: The Department of Energy’s Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) is moving national security innovation forward at its multi-mission engineering and advanced manufacturing facilities. KCNSC provides secure, trusted mechanical, electrical and material engineering and manufacturing services to government agencies in the defense, intelligence, and homeland security communities. KCNSC is one of eight sites that comprise the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
Q: KCNSC converges defense-related missions with the Department of Energy and a private corporation, Honeywell. What opportunities and challenges does this organizational landscape afford the organization?
ST: NNSA sites are operated by private sector organizations under sponsoring agreements known as management and operating (M&O) contracts. As a trusted partner of the NNSA since 1949, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies is the prime M&O contractor at the KCNSC and has earned a valued reputation for innovation and cost effective solutions by applying commercial best standards in managing operations.
Q: What challenge is most critical in your daily work, and what solution do you anticipate, if any?
ST: The KCNSC provides unique engineering and manufacturing services in direct support of its government partners’ missions. Understanding the unique technical challenges of each of those missions is critical to ensure our highly skilled engineers and scientists can apply state-of-the-art technologies to create a workable solution in a timely and affordable manner.
Q: How does the work at KCNSC apply directly to the warfighter? What current project(s) do you feel best exemplify that connection?
ST: KCNSC provides direct support to the warfighter in many ways, including developing and building weapons components, providing expertise to help understand unique technical challenges, and transitioning quick field-ready technology from development in the lab into a warfighter’s hands.
Q: What is the role of KCNSC with regard to the local community? How much of your work is private to the DOE / DOD and how much is with publicly held companies or research organizations?
ST: As a federal facility, work conducted at the KCNSC is strictly restricted to the Department of Energy’s mission.
Q: How does the Defense TechConnect Summit help KCNSC connect with potential partners?
DITAC creates a venue where unique defense challenges and unique technical solutions can be identified and discussed. It also helps identify state of the art technologies which our government partners may be able to utilize in furtherance of their missions.