THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 18, 1996 TAG: 9609180627
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 27 lines
After winning a $50.6 million Navy contract in July, the diversified engineering company SEMCOR Inc. has halted work on the communications contract because of a protest from a rival bidder.
``We're ready to begin tomorrow if the government says `Go,' '' said Nick Balovich, a SEMCOR divisional vice president in Virginia Beach.
SEMCOR said in July that it planned to add almost 150 employees to its local work force to provide design, installation, maintenance and other services for the Navy In Service Engineering East Coast detachment in Norfolk.
SEMCOR, a diversified engineering firm based in Mount Laurel, N.J., expects to prevail in the dispute and to assemble a team of existing employees and new hires to do the work, Balovich said.
At least a dozen companies had been finalists for the contract, he said. One of these, C3 Inc. of Springfield, Va., filed a protest with the General Accounting Office, a watchdog arm of Congress, shortly after the contract was awarded.
The details of C3's challenge were not available, but the GAO is expected to disclose its ruling in mid-November, said Robert Anderson, public affairs officer at the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center in Norfolk. by CNB