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Capabilities Statement
Per Paragraph H.8.1 of Contract No. W911QY-18-D-0168, the following summarizes the competencies and capabilities as well as emerging technologies and manufacturing processes within the corporate portfolio of Yamasato, Fujiwara, Higa and Associates, Inc., doing business as AQUILA (CAGE CODE 0C1G3).
1.0 About AQUILA
Yamasato, Fujiwara, Higa and Associates, Inc., doing business as AQUILA is an Employee-Owned Small Business specializing in the design and adaptation of technologies to meet unique functional requirements. Our products are used in custom network security architectures, asset monitoring, and radiation detection applications. AQUILA has existed since the mid-1980’s and produces approximately $25 million in products per year.
Headquartered at our 25,000 sq.ft. manufacturing and distribution facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, AQUILA’s 40+ employees include subject matter experts in a variety of disciplines including nuclear physics, international and federal policy analysis, mechanical and electronic design, network engineering, and logistics management.
AQUILA is certified to ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Standards and have manufactured to both TÜV and UL Standards. AQUILA owns a FORTUS 400mc 3D Production System that rapidly prints durable thermoplastic prototype and production components designed in-house with Solid Works 3D Modeling software. The ability to design and print in 3D allows AQUILA to quickly provide a tangible response to client design requests and to produce parts which cannot be easily or quickly machined.
AQUILA personnel have a long history of building special-purpose systems, many for the Department of the Army. We have developed automatic manufacturing controllers currently in use at Owens-Illinois, Improvised Explosive Device Countermeasure Equipment (ICE) for the US ARMY, embedded communications interface for space applications as a subcontractor to IBM, and the AN/PDR-75A dosimetry field reader for US ARMY (4,500 units manufactured and delivered). Our team’s experience with a broad range of products and applications enhance AQUILA’s ability to incorporate subsystems and allow for interface with third-party devices. Since 1987, AQUILA’s design and field engineering staff have been key participants in the design, deployment, and migration between five generations of international containment and surveillance systems designed specifically for safeguarding and monitoring sensitive nuclear materials worldwide.
Our company is registered with SAM.gov and classified as a small business by the following Small Business Administration for North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes: 334519, 541511, 541512, 541711, and 541712. AQUILA maintains a Secret Facility Clearance and our key personnel hold DoD and DOE security clearances.
2.0 Production Expertise
AQUILA personnel have a long history of designing, manufacturing, and integrating special‐purpose systems. We recently produced over 5,000 AN/PDR-75A dosimetry readers for the U.S. Army, and we are currently executing a contract to deliver approximately 2,000 more such readers. With more than 40 years of production design and manufacturing experience, our team fabricated custom rack-mounted commodity based systems for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) programs for worldwide deployments. We produced a communications system for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to be deployed in hostile environments. We are presently implementing a legacy instrument production effort to fulfill the U.S. Army’s need for Radiation Protection Officer (RPO) Kits, for which the original design dates back to the 1980’s.
In addition, AQUILA’s field engineers have unique domestic and international service experience, having performed more than 2,250 international and domestic surveillance system installations and/or on-site services during the past 26 years. AQUILA manufactured, installed, and presently provides maintenance services for over 500 systems in major hospitals and universities across the country in support of the U.S. Department of Energy Global Threat Reduction Initiative.
The institutional knowledge amassed during these and other projects allows AQUILA to offer quality production processes that are controlled, scalable, and accountable for life cycle challenges such as parts obsolescence and new as well as legacy design replication. As a result, AQUILA’s management approach to JE-RDAP manufacturing focuses on providing the Government with ISO-quality, rugged, sustainable equipment that meets deployment and budgetary requirements.
2.1 Secure Facility
AQUILA is headquartered at a 25,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. AQUILA’s processes are certified to ISO 9001:2015 and the site holds a Secret facility clearance. AQUILA has achieved UL and TUV factory certifications for its products whenever such certifications are applicable. AQUILA’s location also provides convenient access to test facilities at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). AQUILA has a long-term relationship with WSMR due to past projects for qualifying equipment to MIL standards. AQUILA has the facilities in-place, proven on-going similar efforts, with the capability to meet design, fabrication, production, and support requirements for military instruments.
AQUILA product management, manufacturing and engineering staff are co-located in a single integrated facility for full lifecycle product support.
2.2 Prototype to Full Production Processes
AQUILA uses a team-based manufacturing approach for prototype fabrication to facilitate rapid production cycles. The present relevant team expertise includes knowledge in radiation detection physics, radiation dosimetry and associated detector types, mechanical engineering with appropriate considerations for EMI shielding, mechanical strength, and instrument protection from the environment that is relevant for military operations, electrical and electronics engineering for signal processing and power supply, and software engineering for embedded firmware and external software. AQUILA’s fabrication capabilities include the Stratasys FDM 400mcTM 3D printer, a user configurable system AQUILA uses to create parts and assemblies from conceptual prototypes through full production.
Figure 1. AQUILA has the facilities in-place, proven on ongoing similar efforts, with the capability to meet design, fabrication, production, and support requirements.
2.3 Flexible Manufacturing
The AQUILA manufacturing floor is easily configurable to support different engineering and production runs and includes available space for receiving, inventory, Government-furnished property (GFP) storage, systems integration, test, packaging, and shipping. Approximately 300 square feet of production space is dedicated to test equipment to meet the MIL-STD-810E environmental test requirements of current ongoing production efforts. Equipment includes a vibration table and two large temperature chambers for environmental testing. AQUILA has a high potential electrical safety test bench for UL certification and an optical table for development and alignment work on optical components. AQUILA personnel use work instruction documents to receive and inspect incoming material and subsystems, dispatch material to meet production requirements, assemble and test the product at workstations, perform final testing, and package and ship units from the shipping dock.
AQUILA uses the Made2Manage enterprise resource planning system for organizing the production work flow. Engineering and production requirements are translated into a supply plan that is distributed to subcontractors and vendors in the form of purchase orders with delivery schedules aligned to support the required schedule.
AQUILA operates under an overall quality assurance program to maintain its ISO 9001:2015 certification and measures, and has a safety program to provide a safe working environment for its employees.
2.3 High-Rate Production Capability
AQUILA’s recent and relevant performance includes products characterized by high-value, high-reliability, and very long service life design attributes with careful design choices, selection of long service life parts and extensive testing to validate the design. As a high-rate manufacturer of the U.S. Army Improvised Explosive Device Countermeasure Equipment (ICE) project, AQUILA demonstrated the capability for production of complex systems during the ARMY’s 2004-2005 Rapid Fielding Initiative wherein AQUILA’s combined engineering and production team worked to deliver more than 2,000 ICE systems and 700 spares to the U.S. ARMY. Over the last 6 years, AQUILA has designed and produced over 5,000 AN/PDR-75A dosimetry readers, and is currently executing a contract to deliver approximately 2,000 more such readers. The reader is designed to read the DT-236A watch dosimeter worn by soldiers. The AN/PDR-75A project has included adjustments to the manufacturing processes for better consistency of product, engineering changes through the ECP process for unanticipated parts changes, and continues to provide regular updates to the Army through weekly calls on the status of production, shipments and test results for on-going conformal reporting.
2.4 Expansion Capability
After assessing the current MRL of a product design, AQUILA team members collaborate to develop actions and cost estimates toward achieving the next target MRL, identifying and mitigating manufacturing risks, and implementing those actions and mitigations according to the defined schedule. AQUILA has several contingency plans for expansion of any future product into full production. We have experience from the AN/PDR-75A production of significantly expanding beyond the steady state capacity. There are several approaches available to AQUILA. The possibilities include reassigning additional space from our 25,000 sq. ft. facility floor space for the additional production as needed. Our floor space is allocated in a way that this can be accommodated. Another expansion option is to move inventory currently stored in the AQUILA building to a secure satellite facility. This has no risks for other on-going engineering and production projects.
2.5 Obtaining Necessary Resources
AQUILA is currently executing task orders under three different IDIQ contracts, one for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one for Sandia National Laboratories, and one for the U.S. Army. AQUILA currently has an Umbrella CRADA with Sandia National Laboratories for rapid ramp up of development and commercialization of cutting edge technologies. AQUILA also has an on-going relationship that can be utilized on short notice with White Sands Missile Range for performing the type of testing that is typically required to qualify equipment for military use.
The key AQUILA personnel have worked together under these and the various other projects mentioned above for over 20 years. We have the core competence to develop and manufacture radiation detection instruments and systems. If a ramp up in development or production is required, we have hired additional personnel, and/or used our extensive supplier network to increase throughput. AQUILA is located in an area of the country where there are several DoD and DOE facilities with a ready supply of contract labor and subcontractors familiar with work in this field, and AQUILA has existing relationships with a variety of companies for this purpose. Therefore, AQUILA has a demonstrated strategic approach to partnering and subcontracting in order to obtain the resources necessary to achieve successful, quality production efforts.
3.0 New/Emerging Technologies
AQUILA works closely with each end-user community to develop customer-driven, innovative tools and technologies to solve real-world challenges. We open our doors to receive input from and collaborate with our industry partners, which include representatives from academic institutions; industry; national laboratories; and federal, state, local, and tribal agencies. In our shared facility Aquila’s team members and partners provide leadership, best practices, research, support, and even training for an identified threat. Our teams currently are working on projects to:
- Protect the food supply from those who may attempt to cause large-scale public health harm via expansions to our Rapid Detector Sensor Platform (RDSP);
- Factor next-generation security and countermeasures into the design and use of integrated systems and networks to better guard against digital crime and cyberterrorism;
- Develop infrastructure solutions and intelligent control and monitoring systems for data centers to minimize their carbon footprint; and
- Accurately and quickly identify chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear (CBRN) threats to military personnel and first responders in the field.
The following paragraphs overview three emerging technologies with relevance to Contract No. W911QY-18-D-0168.
Novel Fission Meter. Under a collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, our team has designed a novel, portable fission meter system that uses a different neutron generator and is expected to weigh 50 lbs or less when completely assembled including the active interrogation source. The collaborative AQUILA/SNL design can detect both uranium and plutonium in shielded and unshielded scenarios with measurement times of only a minute or two.
Disruptive Detector Technologies. Our team is commercializing a real time detector system for measuring the dose rate of an ionizing radiation source (alpha, beta, gamma, or neutron) that utilizes a technology shift from GM tube type technology.
Low Resource Biosensors. AQUILA has commercialized the Sandia BADx Cartridge which is designed for detecting Anthrax in low resource environments using Lateral Flow Assay (LFA) methodology. More than 450 commercial versions of the cartridge have already been delivered. A project to streamline the manufacturing process for larger production volumes is presently already underway.
High Performance Computing Cooling Solution. AQUILA’s fixed cold plate warm water cooling is an combines efficient, dense, reliable, and easy-to-use server cooling with the industry’s best TCO and ROI. AQUILA’s Dual Processor Intel® Xeon® Aquarius server systems offer higher performance, higher reliability, higher density, and the Industry’s best efficiency. With overall efficiency in the 95% range for server resources, adopting Aquarius, liquid-cooled computing will markedly enhance a data center’s PUE, while drastically reducing operating expenses.
Multi-Probe. AQUILA’s SunRad Multi-Probe measures Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation simply and elegantly. This design replaces the GM and Scintillator with a rugged MIL-STD solid state SunRad detector, and the Multi-Probe is readable and configurable via Bluetooth, NFC or USB connection to cell phones and laptops.
Unique Always-On Authentication. AQUILA’s full-time authentication for physical protection applications such as glove boxes, vaults, and other high security items.
4.0 Field Services
AQUILA’s specialized knowledge of IT technologies, specifically in the area of network security, ensures that our custom technologies allow for reliable design and implementation of remote applications. Our network security specialists ensure that every remote access or data broadcast design maintains industry and federal information security standards.
AQUILA personnel have a unique history of designing, manufacturing, deploying, integrating and maintaining optical surveillance systems for unique applications. For example, AQUILA’s design and field engineering staff have been key participants in the design, deployment, and migration between five generations of international containment and surveillance systems designed specifically for safeguarding and monitoring sensitive nuclear materials worldwide. Specifically, AQUILA’s field engineers have performed more than 2,250 international and domestic surveillance system installations and/or on-site services during the past 26 years. Our engineers possess DOD clearances and have undergone trustworthiness and reliability (T&R) adjudication.
5.0 Deployment Support
Just as quality practices are employed throughout the product design and production processes, AQUILA ensures that resources are dedicated to the deployment, use, and maintenance of our products. AQUILA staffs a 24×7 Customer Service Desk with field-experienced engineering staff, we have created product-specific websites, and produced maintenance operation training videos to ensure that our products continue to meet our customers’ needs as they are installed and operate in their field environment. Additionally, AQUILA offers monthly WebEx training to our user communities.
As an example, AQUILA has developed an entire suite of support products for systems, which have been installed at numerous sites in both U.S. and international locations. The objective of the Customer Service Desk is to provide immediate support to resolve service interruptions. The Customer Service Desk team is responsible for logging and monitoring incidents; applying solutions to known errors in collaboration with the site; and ensuring that the relevant system configurations are up-to-date. The Customer Service Desk team is:
- Equipped with tools needed to address system service and maintenance issues;
- Prepared to escalate incidents to higher levels to quickly resolve service problems; and
- Experienced in field installations and troubleshooting a variety of configurations.
The Customer Service Desk is staffed by engineers with RMS field installation, maintenance, and repair hands-on experience. The Service Desk staff members assist RMS sites in-person (site visit), by phone, and e-mail. To augment the Customer Service Desk, AQUILA developed system documentation and an RMS-specific website. The RMS secure website features eLearning RMS Training Modules that were developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
6.0 Warranty Support
All AQUILA manufactured products include a one-year return-to-factory warranty. Optional extended warranty programs are available in custom configurations for hardware or software or both and are priced separately.
AQUILA stocks spare parts that are available for advanced replacement to ensure the customer remains up and running in critical environments. Our stocking ratio is approximately 3% of domestic installed base. Leveraging our daily FedEx and UPS pick-up procedures, AQUILA’ s Logistics Team can ship critical replacement components the same day.
Our accounting system tracks RMAs to ensure faulty units are returned. All faulty units are run through QA testing upon return to factory. Through our QA system, we track problem components. AQUILA’s configuration management is tracked through our internal system via Made2Manage and SimpleTrak to ensure all personnel involved with a site has access to current configuration information.
AQUILA’s Customer Service team publishes Technical Product Updates to alert customers to potential problems and recommend upgrades. We also maintain a secure web-site to assist with customer support that includes an engineering section and also highlights FAQs, tips and tricks, training, and product downloads. AQUILA maintains licenses with both WebEx and TeamViewer as tools for remote training and troubleshooting.
7.0 Logistics Management
For client organizations interested in reducing asset investment and improving asset productivity, AQUILA provides logistics services to analyze, develop, and execute logistics plans for equipment fleet deployments. AQUILA manages the client’s inventory, distribution, installation, end-user training, and warranty repair and maintenance of equipment.
For example, one of DOE’s programs to support open source recovery efforts, the Global Search and Secure Program (GSSP), provides countries with radiation detection equipment and training to locate and recover lost or abandoned radiological sources and secure them in interim or permanent storage facilities. For GSSP, AQUILA staff team with DOE and representatives from the national laboratories to provide equipment support for Search and Secure training workshops held worldwide. AQUILA’s team support includes coordination with U.S. Embassies to export the equipment fleet and to provide subject matter experts as needed to train the end-country representatives on Search and Secure equipment use. AQUILA also manages on-site and remote warranty repair for the program’s equipment fleet.
8.0 Network Security
By integrating AQUILA’s own business and consulting services with best-of-breed solutions from industry leaders in network hardware, software and security AQUILA offers a single source network solution to our Network Security market segment, including:
- Secure network design, installation, and integration
- Security policy design & enforcement
- Desktop security solutions for applications & devices
- Secure remote access
- Risk/vulnerability assessments
- Auditing services
- Managed security services
- Secure storage & backup solutions
- Certified product training
- Compliance monitoring
- Secure storage & backup solutions
- End-point security & compliance
AQUILA’s Networking team seeks to address two major technology trends impacting business operations on a global scale. These technology trends involve an organization’s ability to (1) provide network access to users with multiple devices and (2) to secure their network and data in the face of increased numbers of devices connected to their network.
This trend of multiple devices demanding access to an organization’s network–such as having the choice of any device and anywhere, anytime access, are somewhat antithetical to traditional IT requirements for security and support. AQUILA’ network expertise will assist its customers in maintaining secure access to their organization’s network.
9.0 Integrating Technical Solutions
By tapping into AQUILA’ network security knowledge and 3rd Party supplier relationships, AQUILA works with its networking customers to set-up and configure their network policies in a way that ensures device choice does not mean sacrificing security. AQUILA helps each IT division establish the minimum security baseline that any device must meet to be used on the corporate network, including WiFi security, VPN access, and perhaps add-on software to protect against malware. In addition, due to the wide range of devices, AQUILA enables their customers to identify each device connecting to the network and authenticate both the device and the person using it.
AQUILA’ Networking Group offers a variety of alternate solutions to provide organizations with compute resources without compromising the organization’s sensitive data. Leveraging AQUILA’s expertise and supplier network enables us to set-up and deploy secure networks for our clients in a manner that meets the basic requirement of allowing employees to use a variety of devices to increase the organization’s productivity.
10.0 Project Management
AQUILA recognizes the importance of employing stringent project management practices in every phase of a project, including:
- Initiating – Developing the project charter and identifying all stakeholders.
- Planning – Defining scope, work breakdown structure, sequencing of activities, assigning resources, cost estimating, and schedule development to ensure quality.
- Executing – Directing and managing performance to the plan, developing project team members, communicating with stakeholders, and assisting with vendors.
- Monitoring and Controlling – Performing change control, incorporating changes in scope/schedule/cost, and performance reporting.
- Close out – Finalize project deliverables, and acceptance.
We follow the above processes per the guidance outlined in ANSI/PMI 99‐001‐2008 and the PMBOK® Guide. AQUILA’s PMP certified professionals use industry standard tools such as Primavera Project Planner®, Primavera Risk Analysis® and Microsoft Project®. Additionally, resource-loaded schedules are typically created for each production effort using Primavera Risk Analysis® in order to model duration uncertainty through Monte Carlo simulation and establish a 95% confidence level of key milestones.
11.0 Quality Assurance System
AQUILA’s design and manufacturing processes are defined in compliance with ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Standards and on-site test equipment allows design and engineering staff to test up to MIL STD 810E ruggedness standards. Having achieved ISO 9001:2015 Certification since 2010, AQUILA employs an electronic-based Quality Management Control system, SimpleTRAK, to increase employee involvement, customer satisfaction, and data effectiveness, while decreasing production costs and time.
AQUILA’s ISO 9001:2015-certified QMS governs activities at our 25,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and facility management processes. Our Secret-cleared facility includes secure storage, production floor, factory automation for production independent verification and validation. Recent AN/PDR-75A production has been conducted under Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) oversight.
For more information, contact AQUILA’s Program Director for Contract No. W911QY-18-D-0168:
Robert M. White
Yamasato, Fujiwara, Higa & Associates, Inc., d.b.a. AQUILA
8401 Washington Pl., N.E.
Albuquerque, NM 87113
Ph. 505.923.3160
Cell: 505.301.5485
Email: mwhite@aquilagroup.com
Web: devsiteaquila.wpengine.com
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