Lynnwood firms lands Mississippi work at Paris Air Show

The trip to France was worth it. Lynnwood-based Nova-Tech Engineering landed work in Mississippi during a meeting Monday with Orbital ATK executives at the Paris Air Show.

“They were able to more or less confirm that they are ready to go forward,” said Bill Bigot, Nova-Tech’s vice president of business development.

The firm will do the engineering on upgrading a rocket transporter at Orbital ATK’s Iuka, Mississippi, location.

“We’re doing a complete retrofit of the control hardware” as part of the work, he said.

Orbital ATK, which is headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, hopes the upgrades will add five years to the lifespan of the 15-year-old equipment, he said.

Orbital ATK formed in February from the merger of Orbital Sciences Corporation and Alliant Techsystems Inc.

For smaller firms such as Nova-Tech Engineering, which has 103 employees, air shows such as Paris offer great opportunities to meet directly with corporate execs, who can be otherwise hard to reach, Bigot said.

“These people are extremely hard to find in their offices. They’re always busy and often traveling,” he said. “When they’re here, they’re focused on their business” and doing business with other companies.

“We’re trying to capitalize” on people’s availability, he said.

Bigot is meeting with two Airbus Group executives on Thursday to discuss opportunities for work on the A320 family of single-aisle airplanes.

“For me to find two senior vice presidents from Airbus sitting in a room for one hour is incredibly rare,” he said.

Nova-Tech Engineering does work for Boeing, Brazilian planemaker Embraer and BAE Systems, among many other aerospace companies.

Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.

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