Background

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the frontline border security agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CBP’s mission is to enforce the laws of the United States while facilitating the flow of legitimate travel and trade. CBP prevents narcotics, agricultural pests, and smuggled goods from entering the country and also identifies and arrests individuals with outstanding criminal warrants. To assist the CBP, DHS created the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) program to:

  1. Detect an illegal entry across the U.S. border
  2. Identify and classify the threat level associated with that illegal entry
  3. Rapidly respond to the area of the illegal entry
  4. Bring the situation to a law enforcement resolution

Challenge

Unisys, in partnership with Boeing and other major contractors was tasked with building the SBInet system. Implementing such critical capability required trustworthy people with rare and specialized skills. With limited funding, Unisys would need to man the effort with low-cost personnel residing in the expensive Washington DC metro area.

The Solution

Even with the resources that a multibillion company like Unisys has, finding specialized people working from a specific area, who could meet their tight costs constraints, was a challenge even Unisys could not overcome. Unable to fill two critical geospatial engineering positions, Unisys reached out to STP, whom it had an excellent track record with while working on the IRS modernization program. STP was able to find and staff two geospatial engineers who provided the program with invaluable expertise.