EVERETT – What will the passenger air systems on the new Boeing 787 have in common with designer sunglasses, Kenworth truck cabs and Xbox game consoles?
They’ll all have been designed by a small Everett engineering company, PCSI Design.
PCSI is an eight-person engineering group that works in a converted house on the south edge of downtown Everett. The company was founded in 1997 by Carlos Veliz, who went out on his own after a brief stint as a contract engineer at the Boeing Co.
Dan Bates / The Herald
Last month, the firm was hired to design passenger service units for the new 787. Those are the seat-side controls that allow passengers to turn reading lights on and off and adjust the flow of air through the “gaspers” – the nozzles of the ventilation system. The service units also house emergency oxygen masks and signs.
The primary contract on the units went to Drager Aerospace, a German firm. But while Drager is an industry-leading manufacturer, it needed an engineering firm to do the design work.
“They went out looking for companies that could support them here in the States,” Veliz said. PCSI pitched a proposal to Drager and won the contract.
Now, “PCSI Design is very much valued and a significant partner in our success with Boeing,” said Wolfgang Rittner, Drager’s manager of strategic business development.
Veliz said the firm has 14 months to deliver the design. The goal is to come up with a unit that installs more simply – and cheaply – than existing models.
PCSI isn’t exclusively an aerospace design group. The firm takes on about 40 projects a year, and has worked on as diverse as fish ladders and knee braces. Doing that keeps everyone sharp, he said.
That – and the fact that Veliz and several people on his team are bilingual and multi-cultural – gives the firm “a broader vision,” he said. “We see more than the average competitor. That’s why customers come to us.”
Over the years, the firm has worked for a number of top-flight companies. It did engineering analysis for Starbucks, designed the exteriors for Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles and developed skis that U.S. Army Apache and Blackhawk helicopters use when landing in snow.
PCSI did drafting work for the architects who designed Qwest Field in Seattle. And it’s even done some work for Boeing, design work for the company’s SeaLaunch rocket program.
“We have some pretty nice fingerprints on a lot of cool stuff,” Veliz said.
But this is the first contract PCSI has won to work on an Everett-based Boeing program.
“We’ve always looked at that is a goal,” Veliz said.
It hasn’t been easy. “If you didn’t notice when you walked in the door, we’re not a large corporation,” he said. The firm has met with Boeing about design contract before, but never found one that made sense for it.
Now, Veliz said, “We have an opportunity to excel, a chance for folks to get to know our team. … I’m hoping that Boeing will see what our production is, and we’ll get more things from them.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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