THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410070586
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
Boosted by two Navy contracts worth up to $16 million, Virginia Beach-based S3 Ltd. has hired 40 employees over the past two weeks and plans to add as many as 20 more within six months.
William Casanova, president and majority owner of the government support-services contractor, said S3's current employment, 85, is the highest in its nine-year history.
S3 won two long-term contracts last month from the Navy. On Sept. 9, it was awarded a contract worth up to $7.8 million over the next five years to upgrade computer systems for the Naval In Service Engineering East operation. The contract covers computer workstations at Navy installations in Hanahan, S.C.; St. Inigoes, Md.; Washington; and Portsmouth.
On Sept. 27, S3 was chosen by the Naval Material Transportation Office for a roughly $8 million contract at the Norfolk Naval Base. Under that three-year contract, the company will operate a facility that processes worldwide shipments to naval installations of various goods purchased by Navy vendors. This is under what is known as the Navy's vendor receipts and expediting program.
The $7.8 million contract was a new one. In the other, S3 is taking over an operation that had been performed by a Seekonk, Mass.-based contractor, CFS Air Cargo Inc.
S3 won both contracts under the government's 8(a) program, which sets aside a certain amount of work for minority-owned contractors. Casanova, who is of Puerto Rican descent, retired from the Navy as a lieutenant in 1982 and started his company several years later. He had spent 21 years on active duty. by CNB