At a March 19 gathering at Engility Corp.’s Chantilly, Va. headquarters, Executive Mosaic founder and CEO Jim Garrettson presented Engility leaders Tony Smeraglinolo, president and CEO, and Craig Reed, senior vice president for strategy and corporate development, with plaques recognizing their election to the 2013 class of the Wash100.
It has been a busy past few years for both executives – and ones with a distinct focus on the future and thriving in historically challenging GovCon and budget environments.
“We’re not managing around this constrained market,” Smeraglinolo told Executive Mosaic. “We created Engility with this environment in mind. To put it another way, we didn’t’ create Engility in spite of this market, we created the company because of this market.”
“We built Engility with a business model and a goal to be the best pure-play services provider that can differentiate on price.”
The executives are at the forefront of a dynamic leadership group with experience from across GovCon that has driven Engility’s formation and continues to hone its focus on future growth.
Smeraglinolo went to L-3 Communications‘ board of directors in 2011 with the foresight and initial plan to spin off some of its government services operations into a standalone company. Reed would join L-3 in April 2012 to help drive that effort forward.
And on July 31, 2012, the pair stood with other Engility leaders to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, less than two weeks after Engility began trading on the exchange as a public company.
“You hear a lot of people say it takes 12 to 18 months to finish a realignment like this,” Reed told ExecutiveBiz back in September 2012. “We’re going to do it by the end of the year, which is a testament to our commitment to executing.”
Parenthetically, that goal was met when Engility subsequently announced it had successfully realigned the business organizations and various functions by Jan. 1, 2013.
The credit markets agreed. When Engility went to refinance in the summer of 2013, “we had very strong lender community support for that financing which gave us some additional fire power,” Smeraglinolo said. “We had come out of the spin and we were performing well. We met our commitments.”
“In many ways, 2013 was a year when we were able to mature as a company and people got comfortable in their roles and with the policies and procedures,” Smeraglinolo said. “That allowed us the ability to pick our heads up a little bit and say, ‘we’ve done a good job of creating this company; where else do we want to take it and let’s get moving on a very robust strategic planning process.’”
Smeraglinolo told GovCon Wire in March 2013 that the company was considering M&A activities to support its growth.
In December, the company announced its intent to acquire Dynamics Research Corporation (DRC), a company “in much more enduring and higher priority funding markets” that really “brings us into that area where everybody has been trying to position or brand themselves.” The acquisition of DRC closed Jan. 31, 2014.
DRC is an IT and management consulting firm that focuses around 75 percent of its business in areas including healthcare, security, research and development, ISR, and financial regulation.
Reed sees several additional differentiators in DRC’s capabilities and these markets that will enable Engility to continue to bolster its future plans.
“Engility had an ad campaign last year, which focused on our speed, agility, and innovation,” Reed said. “It was a great campaign for us, but it also really captures how we’re running the company on a day to day basis.”
“We’re just excited. We’re excited about the quality and the caliber of the people of DRC that are joining the Engility family. We’re excited to reach out to them and welcome them into Engility.
“We think 2014 is going to be a great year for us and this is a grand start to it.”
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The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders that demonstrate consistent commitment to organizational excellence, and drive above-average value to the U.S. public through strategic vision, innovation and achievement.
Click here to learn more about the origins and criteria of the Wash100 here, and click here to see a full listing of all 2013 awardees.
