Big plans for growth

A small Washington, D.C.-based company that sells emergency communications gear to the Defense Department and other government agencies has big plans to grow in Colorado Springs during the next two or three years.

Rivada Networks LLC plans to double its 45-person local work force in the next year and grow to about 300 employees after winning contracts with Northern Command, the National Guard Bureau and Federal Emergency Management Agency in the last few years that could total as much as $240 million, said James Tackett, Rivada's senior vice president of homeland security and top executive in its Springs office.

Most of the company's openings pay annual salaries between $60,000 and $120,000 and are for engineers specializing in cellular, land mobile radio and network technology as well as satellite communications, Tackett said. For more information, call 1 (866) 417-9993.

Rivada hired Tackett to work on a small Northern Command contract out of an ofice in his basement in 2004. The company has expanded the ofice three times this year to 20,000 square feet it leased earlier in the year in a mostly vacant building at 7899 Lexington Drive, said Jim DiBiase of Olive Real Estate Group Inc., who helped find the space for Rivada as its real estate broker.

Tackett said Rivada would eventually like to lease most of the remaining space in the 77,000-square-foot building, which he hopes to fill by expanding its work with existing customers and winning additional contracts with state and local governments.

"We have done well in delivering more than 30 of our (communications) systems to the government over the last three years, and we have orders for 20 more to be delivered in the next six to 12 months," Tackett said. "One of the reasons we selected Colorado Springs for this operation is that the reasonable cost of living here makes it easy to attract the people here that we recruit nationwide, especially since many of them have a military background."

Rivada creates temporary communications networks made up of quickly erected cell phone towers that are used by military, National Guard, FEMA and other first responders to disasters such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires and terrorist attacks, Tackett said. The company's networks were used after Hurricane Katrina and the recent Midwest floods to allow communication when traditional networks were disabled, he said.

In the wake of its work after Katrina, Rivada won a $300,000 order from Northern Command that eventually led to an eightyear contract worth up to $65 million, depending on how many systems the command orders, Tackett said. The contracts with the National Guard and FEMA are similar long-term deals that allow the agencies to spend up to $150 million and $25 million, respectively.

Declan Ganley started Rivada in 2003 to try to overcome some of the communications problems firefighters like his brotherin-law in New York coped with during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The company is owned by Ireland-based Rivada Networks International.

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Contact the writer: 636-0234 or wayneh@gazette.com

Ribboncutting at Rivada Networks

Where: 7899 Lexington Drive, Suite 250
When: 3 p.m. today
Who: Declan Ganley,

Chairman and chief executive of Rivada Networks LLC, will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the company's new Colorado Springs office.