LAKE STEVENS — Thousands of people will end up working on the Boeing Co.’s new 7E7 Dreamliner, it’s just that most of them won’t work for Boeing itself and there’s no guarantee any of them will work in Snohomish County.
The Snohomish County Economic Development Council is trying to persuade Boeing’s top-level suppliers to bring that work to Everett, council president Deborah Knutson said Monday.
"The key point now is not that there will be 1,200 more (Boeing) jobs," she told the Lake Stevens Chamber of Commerce. "It could be up to 20,000. It probably won’t be that many, and they may not all be here."
Boeing’s new plan for building the 7E7 is more like the model followed by Airbus, Knutson told the chamber members.
Boeing plans to hire between 800 and 1,200 people to work on the new jet. Work that used to be done by Boeing workers will instead be done by employees of other companies. They’ll be working on Boeing planes, maybe even in Boeing buildings, but they’ll be drawing their paychecks from somewhere else.
"It’s going to look very different," Knutson said.
The question is where the work will get done. The development council is working with some of the key contractors to convince them that they’re better off setting up shop near Everett than trying to build completed components in their home factories and shipping them undamaged across oceans.
"We’re trying to help them look at their business plan," she said. "We might be the location of choice."
Engineers from the major suppliers and partners already are starting to show up in Everett, Knutson said. The council is working with them to get them to locate their homes and offices in Snohomish County, she said.
"Lake Stevens will definitely be part of that," Knutson said.
The council also is trying to help the state’s network of 550 small aerospace companies line up contacts — and eventually contracts — with the top-level suppliers that Boeing is working with, she said.
Last year’s successful 7E7 campaign has raised the profile of Snohomish County, Knutson said. "We couldn’t possibly pay for all the attention we got when Boeing announced it was going to build the 7E7 here."
As a result, "the phone is ringing a lot more," Knutson said.
It was a lot of work, she said.
"We had to prove to Boeing, and to ourselves, that they were a company worth keeping," Knutson said.
In the end, the answer was simple, she said. "We couldn’t replace what would have been lost."
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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