Coming together at Cape Canaveral

Situated side by side on Florida's east coast and separated by a picturesque river, the neighboring compounds strove for years to maintain their distinctness with separate support services-everything from security police and firefighters to grass cutters and garbage collectors. Now, in an unprecedented display of cooperation, Kennedy and the Cape want to be one and the same to space-launch customers-and they've hired the Herndon, Va., joint venture Space Gateway Support to help them do it.

SGS teams aerospace giant Northrop Grumman with ICF Kaiser Defense Programs and Wackenhut Services to consolidate facilities management at America's premier spaceport.

The government's goal is to cut expenses and reinvest savings so Cape Canaveral can continue to compete in the global launch market. The anticipated savings: as much as $900 million over 10 years.

Partnering is all the rage in industry, but it's only beginning to catch on in government. "What's attracting attention more than anything else is the partnering between two government agencies," says Ed Gormel, administrator of the $2.2 billion, 10-year Joint Base Operations and Support Contract, which was to receive a Hammer Award from Vice President Gore for positive change in government operations in July.

A team of NASA and Air Force 45th Space Wing managers handled the acquisition, using the best processes from both agencies. Their teamwork continued into a Joint Program Management Office staffed with a mixture of NASA and Air Force employees. As executive director of the office, Gormel reports to a board of directors whose chair and vice-chair rotate every two years between the Kennedy director and the 45th Space Wing commander.

The government wanted a seamless transition from two distinct base maintenance and support operations into one. "We came on board in October in the busiest time, with the John Glenn launch and the first space station launch," says SGS spokesman Robert Koch. "We were able to transition from the old contract to the new contract-not easily, but seamlessly-without any interruption in services."

Koch says SGS is especially proud of the 911 emergency response center consolidation it completed in the spring. "That was not trivial, but it was done through the use of some innovative technologies," he says. Negotiating contracts with about a dozen unions on either side of the Banana River was a major challenge, too, because some of the union members do identical jobs. It took SGS more than seven months to hammer out agreements that let union members from the Cape side work at Kennedy and vice-versa.

In its first six months, SGS earned an 80 percent performance rating, which resulted in a fee of $6.1 million over and above operating costs. SGS employs about 2,600 workers. Some 400 people lost their jobs in the consolidation.