Maintenance expertise attracts a big following for T-Solutions

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
May 2007

The U.S. Navy used to maintain its fleet in much the same way as most people maintain their automobiles: Per the manufacturer’s instructions, be sure to change the oil every 3,000 miles.

“But what if car owners could stretch those maintenance standards out to, say, 6,000 miles or even farther without a failure? If so, over time, you could save a lot of money,” explains Jim Todd, president of Chesapeake-based T-Solutions Inc. “People do it because they think it’s the right thing to do, and the Navy was no different.”

Of course, the Navy’s maintenance schedule involves a lot more than just oil filters, so it stood to save hundreds of millions of dollars when officials decided in the early 1980s to investigate switching from the traditional time-based maintenance schedule to a more modern process known as reliability-centered maintenance.

Rather than performing maintenance based on some arbitrary standard, like the amount of time that’s passed or the number of hours a piece of equipment is in service, reliability-centered maintenance uses technology and rigorous engineering analysis to determine exactly when maintenance should be performed to prevent failure.

Todd, then a U.S. Navy commander and maintenance engineer, helped spearhead the process over the next 20 years and also came up with a new engineering specialty to oversee the new maintenance process. Those specialists are now known as port engineers. The switch, says Todd, “saved the Navy a tremendous amount of money.”

Today, Todd is still helping the Navy streamline its maintenance efforts, but in his role as the technical guru at T-Solutions, he’s also introducing the concept to other equipment-heavy industries.

T-Solutions, which Todd started in 2002 with his wife, Darlene, is the fastest growing company in the 2007 Fantastic 50. Its revenue rose 2,201 percent, from $252,000 to $5.8 million, in the four years ending in 2005. Last year, sales grew another 116 percent to $12.5 million. Todd projects the company’s revenue to reach $32 million this year.

The Todds initially expected to grow their business slowly, but two events enabled them to jump from three to 105 employees in just 2½ years.

First, AMSEC LLC, a company in Virginia Beach, wanted to divest itself of a Navy subcontract for port engineer services and chose to sell it to T-Solutions. That move brought to Todd’s firm 28 port engineers, “all people I had known and had worked with,” Jim says.

In large part because of that acquisition, T-Solutions was able to win the five-year, $120 million Navy Port Engineer contract. The prime contract, awarded in September, calls for 100 port engineers and support staff to monitor, coordinate and schedule reliability-centered maintenance for surface combatant, amphibious warfare and mine warfare ships.

T-Solutions’ second major breakthrough came when Amtrak asked the company to help it move from a time-based to a reliability-centered maintenance process on its Acela high-speed trains. “That was an extraordinary change for us because, while we’re providing the same core competency, it puts us in a brand new market,” Todd says.

In just over a year, T-Solutions’ expertise has enabled Amtrak to realize a benefit of more than $18 million, according to Ken Jacobs, Amtrak’s deputy chief operating officer for reliability-centered maintenance. That figure is a calculation that includes savings, cost avoidance and revenue enhancement.
Amtrak plans to begin expanding the program later this year to include all rolling stock, facilities, tracks and signaling systems. “We’re extremely pleased with these guys,” says Jacobs. “We’re working to eliminate our federal operating subsidy, and the work that they’re doing for us will make a substantial contribution to our ability to do that.”

Following its rapid growth, the company plans to take a short breather this year. “We’ve grown awful fast, awfully quickly,” says Darlene, who as CEO is responsible for all HR and communications activities. “We need to settle out our corporate structure and our people.”

They’ll also take the time to prepare for the Amtrak expansion, which first will double and then triple their workload, going from a $3 million per year contract now to $10 million over the next four years.