Northrop Grumman wins Calif. public safety deal

Northrop Grumman Corp. won a contract from the public safety agencies of Santa Clara County, Calif., to provide an integrated voice-data wireless system that will allow the agencies to communicate effectively while assisting one another during major emergencies, officials of the Los Angeles company said today.

The contract could be worth more than $21 million over about three years, according to the company.

All Santa Clara County municipalities and their fire, emergency medical services and law-enforcement agencies are in the Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Project.

The project seeks to link all 32 municipal and county government public safety agencies through the integrated voice-data wireless system that Northrop Grumman will build.

"We are working in partnership with members of the [project] to leverage capabilities of existing legacy systems, sharing information and saving valuable response time for local fire, police and emergency medical personnel," said Hugh Taylor, president of Northrop Grumman's commercial, state and local solutions business unit.

The Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Project has two phases. In the first phase, worth $1.3 million over 10 months, Northrop Grumman's Herndon, Va., Information Technology sector will provide an assessment, design recommendations and architecture for the radio interoperability and data integration system.

The second phase of the contract includes final engineering, integration, systems verification and project implementation. It is worth $15 million to $20 million over two years, according to Northrop Grumman IT spokeswoman Juli Ballesteros.

Work on the contract will be performed in Campbell, Calif.