BBN Technologies
It’s not uncommon to see empty offices at BBN Technologies’ branch in the Middletown Corporate Park. In BBN’s case, a quiet office means a busy office.
Many of the 43 BBN employees based in Middletown spend most of their days working at Naval Station Newport on complex and classified defense projects. As Roland Mandler, BBN’s Rhode Island site manager, puts it “We’re here to solve the hard problems.”
BBN has a 50-year history of making important technological innovations. Originally a company specializing in acoustics, BBN is perhaps best known for building the precursor to the Internet and inventing e-mail.
Today, BBN is an advanced-technology solutions firm. It specializes in the areas of information security, cryptography, software development and automatic language translation. BBN employs approximately 700 people in seven U.S. locations.
While the company’s Cambridge office handles most of BBN’s research, the Middletown branch is project-focused. Its scientists and engineers handle projects for the Newport Navy base, for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – the U.S. Department of Defense’s central research agency – and for the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office, to name a few.
Many of BBN’s Rhode Island staffers are, like Mandler, former Raytheon Corporation employees who thrive in BBN’s smaller work environment. Collaboration is an important part of their efforts. “Because we’re a small office, people don’t have one responsibility or one area of expertise,” Mandler says.
Many of BBN’s projects center on next-generation capabilities and new technology. But it’s the task of BBN’s Rhode Island employees to take existing state-of-the-art technology and apply it to defense solutions. “We have to solve the problems with what’s available today,” Mandler says.
BBN has been able to attract a lot of local talent, including graduates of the University of Rhode Island’s colleges of engineering and oceanography, Mandler says.
Employees enjoy the company’s efforts to constantly encourage its workers to be innovative and show initiative. “We invite people to champion new business areas. We tell people, ‘If you’re interested in something, let’s get some work in that area.’ People don’t come up and say, ‘What’s my next project?’ You decide what your next project is going to be,” Mandler says. “BBN really says that people are not going to be happy unless they’re doing what they want to be doing. And, obviously, new business does a company good.”
In 2010, Mandler says BBN will likely explore partnering with new clients, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, and leveraging its technology for use in commercial products.
BBN’s Rhode Island workers enjoy living on Aquidneck Island and being part of the area’s long-standing defense-technology industry. BBN, meanwhile, has committed to staying in Rhode Island: The company has signed a new five-year lease – with an option for an additional five years — on its ocean-view Middletown office.