Dallas, TX, April 5, 2016 – First Aviation Services Inc. has received the 2016 ‘MRO of the Year Award for Military Center of Excellence’ from Aviation Week. The company was singled out from maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) industry nominees and the award was presented this morning during a ceremony at the MRO Americas Conference in Dallas, Texas.
Aviation Week editors selected First Aviation for the award due to the company’s efforts to eliminate waste in Department of Defense (DOD) maintenance spending by reducing sole source contracts and promoting competition using the Government’s rights to maintenance and repair technical data.
There are over 4,200 FAA-certified repair facilities that are capable of supporting DOD, but most have been shut out of meaningful competition for these contracts. Unfortunately, DOD all too often sole-sources maintenance and repair work to the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), or cedes control of the solicitation process to the OEM by unnecessarily restricting the contracts to “OEM-approved” or “OEM-licensed” repair facilities. In many cases, these DOD practices result in sole-source awards that repeat annually for decades.
“DOD’s recent competition reports show that up to 80% of aircraft sustainment spending is contracted without competition, usually to the aircraft’s original manufacturer,” explains Josh Krotec, Senior Vice President. “However, we have demonstrated that U.S. based FAA-certified Repair Stations like ours – of which many are small businesses – have the technical capability and experience to meet all DOD Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) requirements.” By taking the simple initiative to use the Government’s right to maintenance and repair manuals for aircraft and other weapon systems, DOD can immediately convert tens of billions of dollars of annual MRO spend from sole source to full-and-open competition. Krotec projects that First Aviation’s efforts will result in over $300 billion in savings to U.S. taxpayers over the next decade and provide tremendous job growth in the U.S. aviation industry.
Chairman & CEO Aaron Hollander said “We are very honored to receive this recognition. What is most important to our firm is that the MRO award provides legitimacy to our efforts to increase competition in the Department of Defense’s procurement processes to bring savings, innovation and improved readiness to support the American warfighter. The move to stop unnecessary sole sourcing will provide additional funds for our country’s necessary and urgent need to modernize our armed forces.”
First Aviation Services Inc. (FAvS), located in Westport, Connecticut, is a leading provider of repair and overhaul, rotables management and related engineering services to the aviation industry worldwide. FAvS’s principal operating subsidiaries are Aerospace Turbine Rotables, Inc. (AeTR) and Evolution Aerospace, Inc. (EVO) in Wichita, KS and Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC (PPS) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. More information about FAvS and its subsidiaries may be found on the company’s website www.firstaviation.com.
