Snowbound : For County Firm, Antarctic Project Is Like Going Home

When Robert L. Murphy steps off the plane at McMurdo Station a year from now, he will be re-establishing an Orange County engineering firm’s Antarctic roots after a 10-year absence from the world’s southernmost continent.

The longtime project manager for Holmes & Narver Inc. of Orange ran the company’s Antarctic operations during its last stint there.

Currently, he is working in the Sinai Desert, where Holmes & Narver’s services subsidiary is suppling logistical support for the Multinational Observer Force established by the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979.

Next year, Murphy will shift continents and climates as project manager for a joint venture that Monday won a six-year, $250-million National Science Foundation contract for operational support for the U.S. Antarctic Program.

It is an especially sweet assignment for the 56-year-old firm because the contract is an enlarged version of the same pact Holmes & Narver won in 1968--when the program was launched--and lost in 1980 when it was outbid by rival ITT Antarctic Services.

This year, Holmes & Narver Services Inc. teamed with EG & G Inc., a $1.5 billion-a-year scientific and technical services company headquartered in Wellesley, Mass., to defeat ITT and several other challengers and recapture the contract.

Holmes & Narver, a unit of Ashland Oil since 1981, doesn’t report annual sales of earnings, but regularly is ranked among the nation’s leading design and construction firms with total billings well in excess of $100 million.

Through its various engineering, architectural, construction and project servicing and managing units, Holmes & Narver is involved in a wide variety of projects and has worked on all seven continents since it was founded in Los Angeles in 1933.

Although the Antarctic award is for six years, the pact specifies a pair of two-year renewal options that could swell the deal to a decade-long, $500-million job, said Samuel D. Feola, who headed the team that prepared the Holmes & Narver-EG & G bid.

Feola will serve as director of logistics systems for the joint venture, which officially begins work under the new contract on April 1, 1991. He said Murphy will lead a small team to Antarctica in October, 1990, to begin taking over from ITT.

Feola said he first was exposed to the Antarctic as a Navy helicopter pilot assigned to the U.S. Antarctic bases for two seasons. He joined Holmes & Narver upon leaving the Navy 12 years ago and immediately was assigned to the company’s Antarctic unit for the remaining two years of the company’s previous contract.

‘Exciting Challenge’

In an interview Tuesday, Feola described the task facing about 100 permanent and 400 seasonal workers under the new contract as “an exciting challenge” involving a variety of construction, engineering, design, logistical and scientific support functions to be carried out in extremely harsh weather conditions.

By comparison, at its peak in 1979 under the old contract, Holmes & Narver had just 200 employees in the Antarctic program. The National Science Foundation paid Holmes & Narver about $80 million for the entire 12 years from 1968 through 1980, Feola said.

To run the program under the new contract, Holmes & Narver and EG & G have established a separate entity, Antarctic Support Associates, that will be headquartered in Denver.

Feola said the city was chosen primarily because the cost of living there is much less than in Orange County and will make it easier to bring in personnel from out of the country and from states where the price of housing isn’t as high as in Orange County.

In addition, he said, Denver is “central” to the northern states--like Minnesota and the Dakotas--from which Antarctic Support Associates plans to recruit many of the construction and other workers who will be stationed in the Antarctic.

“Because it is in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are reversed,” Feola said. “So construction workers in Minnesota, for example, are just ending their working season in the U.S. when the summer weather opens up the Antarctic.”

One of the jobs ASA will tackle under the new contract, he said, is reconstruction of the main U.S. facility at the South Pole--the Amundsen-South Pole Station.

The contract calls for the joint venture to provide direct support to National Science Foundation-sponsored scientific research projects in Antarctica, to operate and maintain the 250-foot research vessel Polar Duke and to operate and maintain U.S. facilities at McMurdo, Amundsen-South Pole and Palmer stations.

In addition, the ASA team will construct various test facilities and outlying testing stations for scientific researchers.

The company is also responsible for bringing in all food and supplies used by the researchers and their support staffs.

Staging Areas

The Antarctic facilities will be served from staging areas in Port Hueneme and, closer to the ice, in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Punta Arenas, Chile.

During the nine-month Antarctic winter, there is little contact other than by radio between the outside world and the personnel assigned permanently to the various research stations. The ASA’s primary function during that period is to maintain the facilities and keep them supplied. Holmes & Narver pioneered many of the support techniques during its first 12 years on the ice.

For its part, joint venture partner EG & G has operated scientific research vessels in Antarctic and South American waters for the National Science Foundation and has a long history of involvement in other U.S. research programs.

Holmes & Narver was founded in 1933 by James T. Holmes, a mechanical and electrical engineer, and D. Lee Narver, a structural engineer.

Its first job was to direct reconstruction of downtown Santa Ana after a major earthquake on March 10, 1933, caused severe structural damage to many of the wooden and brick buildings.

More recently, the company designed and engineered the intrusion detection security system for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. It also provided technical and support services for the U.S. nuclear weapons testing programs in the Pacific since 1951 and in Nevada since 1956.

RETURN TO ANTARCTICA

1959: U.S. Antarctic Program established to maintain an American presence on the continent and to conduct scientific research.

1968: Holmes & Narver wins first contract to provide support services for the Antarctic research effort.

1975: Holmes & Narver begins operation of the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. Radio provides the only means of contact with the outside world for eight months of the year.

1979: Antarctic work force reaches a peak of more than 200.

1980: Contract expires, ending Holmes & Narver’s 12-year role in Antarctica.

1983: Holmes & Narver Services Inc., a subsidiary, is established in Orange to carry out engineering and operations support for government, military and research facilities worldwide.

1989: HNSI wins share of contract valued at $250 million over six years to provide support services under contract to the National Science Foundation.

Source: Holmes & Narver