WT 360: The market from all angles

One of the government market’s most-anticipated transactions closed on Sept. 30 when what we can call “Old Amentum” joined forces with Jacobs’ federal-facing units.

This episode sees Steve Arnette, chief operating officer at what we can now call “New Amentum,” take our Ross Wilkers through all that went into putting this larger company together and where everyone wants to go from here.

Underpinning this new version of Amentum’s vision and goals is what it calls a “technology-enabled growth strategy.” Arnette walks through that very strategy, how it applies to the company’s priority markets and what all of this means for Amentum’s 53,000 employees around the world.

Jerry McGinn, executive director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University, shares the findings of a new report that identifies areas of concern and offers advice for improvement across the defense industrial base.

Some of the key findings that McGinn discusses with Editor Nick Wakeman include the importance of leadership, government and industry collaboration, and the need to design systems for more rapid production.

The U.S. industrial base has responded before, as McGinn says. He offers some of those important lessons from World War II, COVID-19 and the U.S.' response to Ukraine.

The full report is available here.

Bryce Technology has been named to the Washington Technology Fast 50 list for four consecutive years, climbing to No. 11 in 2024.

For this episode, Bryce Tech's founder and CEO Carissa Bryce Christensen shares the secrets behind her company's rapid growth and success in the federal market.

Christensen discusses Bryce's strategic approach to building a scalable business, focusing the pipeline on the right opportunities and nurturing a company culture that empowers employees. She also tells Editor Nick Wakeman about the firm's ability to apply its expertise across both government and commercial sectors, especially in the dynamic space industry.

She also provides advice for aspiring entrepreneurs that emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, building the right partnerships, and staying true to your vision.

Companies can get distracted a lot when carrying out their strategy and vision, which often times leaves them vulnerable to losing market share to competitors and unexpected turns of events.

Everything starts with strategic planning and that is also where the conversation begins for this episode featuring James Calver, a partner at fractional executive services provider TechCXO and multiple-time CEO in the health care and financial services industries.

Growth-oriented mindsets are required for all companies, as Calver tells our Ross Wilkers. That also inevitably leads to acquisitions, of which Calver oversaw dozens throughout his long career and draws lessons from that he gives to other CEOs.

The differences between management and leadership are also on the agenda, as is how to incorporate uncertainty into a plan and vision.

It is not just appearances that suggest a robust government technology market, in fact there are numbers and patterns we can point to here in week number four of federal fiscal year 2025.

Where agencies are putting most of their technology budget dollars to work is the starting point for this episode featuring John Caucis and James Wichert, public sector analysts at the market intelligence firm Technology Business Research.

Caucis and Wichert take our Ross Wilkers through how companies are positioning themselves for that spend, including their organic investments and acquisitions that are signposts for where they want to go.

Also on their discussion agenda: how some companies are looking to wear both the integration and consulting hats, the future of Peraton with a new CEO in place and realities of the artificial intelligence landscape.

Understandably so, the names of global tech giants are often at the center of the conversation surrounding how the U.S. government is putting its CHIPS Act funding to work through grants and other financial incentives.

But the Commerce Department wants many more companies to be a part of the push to restore U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing.

Larry Sher, a government contracts attorney and partner at Winston & Strawn, centers the discussion for this episode around how and where the GovCon industry can get involved as well.

As Sher tells our Ross Wilkers, the nature of the chip market’s supply chain means that Commerce has to cast its net far and wide beyond just the semiconductor makers themselves. Sher also explains some of the trends he is seeing in who is getting the grants and the homework companies must do before applying for the money.

What we can gauge from Intel's $3B military chip grant

IBM awarded $576M DOD chip manufacturing contract

First CHIPS Act award signals start of U.S. semiconductor push

NIST seeks industry support for chip funding applicant checks

NIST builds infrastructure for CHIPS loan program

Boeing’s current difficult period is well-documented and acknowledged by its new CEO Kelly Ortberg, who joined in August to lead the turnaround effort.

Audrey Decker essentially functions as Team GovExec’s Boeing correspondent in her role as Air Force and Space Force reporter for our partner publication Defense One.

For this episode, Audrey breaks down the ongoing turmoil in Boeing’s defense and space segment amid a labor strike and search for a new leader after Ted Colbert left the company on Sept. 20.

This discussion with Ross Wilkers also goes over some of these key priorities for the customers that Audrey covers: a robot wingman program, commercial imagery, space domain awareness and the B-21 bomber.

Artificial intelligence is not just a technology that government contractors provide their customers, but also is becoming a bigger piece of internal operations.

Kim Koster, vice president of product marketing at Unanet, joins WT Editor Nick Wakeman for this episode to discuss how and where contractors are adopting AI in their own operations as found in the newest edition of her company's GAUGE report.

Unanet and CohnReznick work each year to release GAUGE -- Government Contract Compliance, Accounting, Utilization, Growth and Efficiencies.

In explaining the 2024 GAUGE findings, Koster shares insights on AI usage trends, maturity levels and implementation strategies. Still not on your AI journey yet? Koster has some advice on how to start that as well.

Frustration builds up when things go wrong in the world of government acquisition and that feeling is true on both sides: the customer and contractor alike.

Adam Rentschler and his partners started Valid Eval in 2011 to help agencies make better evaluations at scale. All throughout this episode, the latter two words of that sentence come up frequently in the conversation between Rentschler and our Ross Wilkers.

Rentschler’s vision is for the acquisition ecosystem to have more humanity in it and the use of data to help lead that effort.

Those concepts may seem contradictory on the surface, but Rentschler brings them together throughout the discussion.

Many of the ingredients for creating more connective tissues between business, government and society are already in place even with so much commentary and conversation around what may be lacking on that front.

NobleReach Foundation launched in 2022 to be at the forefront of making more of those links happen. In this episode, NobleReach’s chief executive Arun Gupta describes how the nonprofit looks to do just that by taking others with them along the way.

Entrepreneurs out there who want to be part of solving big problems are both a core constituency of NobleReach and agencies that want greater access into that part of the innovation ecosystem, as Gupta explains to our Ross Wilkers.

Gupta co-authored the book “Venture Meets Mission” alongside his colleagues Gerard George and Thomas Fewer to lay out a roadmap and guiding principles for better alignment.