Alabama-based Bevilacqua’s five-year contract is worth up to $8.2 million
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. — A local satellite office for an Alabama-based defense contractor recently was awarded a contract potentially worth millions of dollars for work at the Navy Experimental Diving Unit.
Bevilacqua Research Corp., headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, was awarded a five-year contract with a “maximum value in excess of $8.2 million” to handle diving and biomedical research, dive equipment testing and evaluation and other program support at NEDU, a Naval Support Activity Panama City tenant unit that does saturation dives.
The contract is the Bevilacqua Panama City Beach office’s first with NEDU. The company will hire outside experts, likely “academics” outside Panama City Beach, as subcontractors to handle the work at NEDU.
“The way we foresee the contract is when they start an investigation or experiment, they’ll require either outside expertise or they’ll have to purchase some specific widget or maybe even pay for the research that other outfits have done,” Bevilacqua program director and contract project manager Steve McClain said. “They would task us with, say, bringing in a Ph.D. from another university, maybe to come and help them develop the experiment or investigation or actually conduct it.”
McClain, a Navy veteran who worked as a diver, said the company is “getting up to speed” on the contract and waiting on requirements. While the NEDU contract isn’t as large as previous Bevilacqua contracts, McClain said it’s “no less important.”
“BRC is responsive. We pay attention to what the customer is asking us to do,” McClain said. “We’re very agile. We’re a small business. I tell my customers, ‘My job is to keep you happy.’”
NEDU spokeswoman Lt. Jennifer Jewell confirmed the contract in an email to The News Herald but wrote that the base had no further comment at this time.
Collin Breaux is a reporter for The Panama City Beach (Fla.) News Herald.