Northrop Grumman to build Va. county public safety command center

Stafford County, Va. has contracted with Northrop Grumman Corp. to carry out a project to upgrade the county's IT systems and add a new public safety center to facilitate collaboration in emergency situations.

Northrop Grumman's Information Technology sector, based in McLean, Va., won a 25-month, $36.4 million contract to design and build the 114,000-square-foot public safety center for county police, fire and rescue, and emergency operations.

The facility will contain a 9-1-1 communication center, an emergency management center and will support all of the sheriff's administrative functions, including detention and booking. It also will house administrative offices for fire and rescue and sheriff's office personnel.

Northrop Grumman will integrate new public safety systems designed for improved management of emergency operations and will relocate legacy systems to the new center.

The company also will add new technologies to better help protect the public. Among the new technologies will be a voice over Internet protocol administrative telephone system, a subsystem timing infrastructure using global positioning system technology and a 9-1-1 telephone system.

Northrop Grumman's teammates on the project include NARDI Construction Inc., Beltsville, Md., and Donnally Vujcic Associates, L.L.C., Gaithersburg, Md.

Northrop Grumman IT is a unit of Northrop Grumman Corp., Los Angeles. Northrop Grumman Corp. has about 125,000 employees and annual revenues of $29.9 billion in fiscal 2004, ranks No. 2 on Washington Technology's 2005 Top 100 list of federal prime contractors.