Flying Into New Markets

With the aerospace industry going soft and its biggest client at the time halting work for five months, Terry Hampton and Donna Scott faced hard times with their engineering services firm. The solution to their dilemma was found in going into different markets not reliant on government contracts. More specifically the Hampton Scott Group brought in clients needing designs of devices and parts no longer being manufactured. Luckily, design work on a plastic case covering monitoring equipment used in hospitals and medical offices isn’t too dissimilar to the firm’s core business in aerospace and aviation. “It is a lot like building an aircraft,” Hampton said of the case made for an Orange County manufacturer. “It has supporting structure within its outer surface.” There is no doubt the couple believe they are on the right path. Scott, the entrepreneur of the pair and the firm’s chief financial officer, learned the value of customer flexibility in an economic downturn when operating a printing and packaging company in the 1970s. That flexibility is not limited to medical devices for the Encino-based firm. Scott has contacted manufacturers in Simi Valley and Valencia to find out what they are working on to see if they can provide their services. The firm will do design work on a large art project although Hampton cannot talk about it due to a non-disclosure agreement with the artist. There may not be anything that the company cannot design. “Every object you look at needs to be engineered,” Scott said. Since starting in 2005, Hampton Scott has provided engineering services for major aerospace companies, including Northrop Grumman and Boeing. Boeing’s satellite division in El Segundo was a major client when the aerospace market began to go soft toward the end of 2008. The result was layoffs by Boeing and a period of five months when Hampton Scott did no billable work. Shaky rocket project There were other projects to work on but one of those is now in danger of cancellation: the Ares I rocket to return astronauts to the moon. The proposed budget from the Obama White House would cancel that program. Hampton Scott continues to keep one employee at the NASA facility in Huntsville, Ala. but all other work has stopped. If Ares isn’t somehow saved from cancellation, Hampton Scott will miss out on lucrative work it could have done in Encino. “We really like the offload work that can be done in house,” Scott said. “We use all our engineers on all the projects so they are well rounded and well versed in all the software.” NASA’s plan is to turn to commercial, or NewSpace, launch vehicles to take American astronauts to the International Space Station. Other than SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, not many companies have gotten their spacecraft into the air and are not at that stage they would need the services Hampton Scott provides. Other, non-aerospace work has appeared in the meantime. Tenacore, a medical device maker in Santa Ana, came to Hampton Scott for their expertise in reproducing the design of the housing used for a hospital monitoring device. A brand new housing would cost between $1,100 and $1,300 but Tenacore can do it for a fraction of that cost. Firm’s expertise Hampton Scott has the software capable of capturing the contours of the interior of the housing and with the design in hand can make the device through an injection molding process, said Tenacore CEO Peter Bonin. “We can probably throw a couple of jobs at them a year, Bonin said. This reverse engineering process has also been applied to supply parts to aging F-5 jets in the Taiwan military. Scott finds it heartening that the firm can be involved with making these unavailable parts and to do it a cost much cheaper than the original manufacturer. “Northrop is not going to fire up and manufacture some parts for those (F-5) fleets,” Scott said. ”It is cost prohibitive.” Whether future aerospace projects come Hampton Scott’s way remains unknown until Congress finalizes and passes a budget. Still, Hampton remains positive there will be the usual workload and that additional employees will be hired.