NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES | Walter Burns, managing parner for Blue Force, LLP, served and retired as director of the Air Force Command & Control Transformation Center at Langley AFB. Photo by Paul Chin, Jr.
By T.J. Prieur
“We’re two companies trying to become one,” says Joseph A. May, chairman of the board of Blue Force. The Hampton-based consulting company, which was founded in 2003 by Joe and two partners, Walter Burns and Jeffrey Walker, consists of two divisions, Blue Force and Blue Law.
“We started out as Blue Force in 2003,” May says, explaining how the company’s two divisions came into being, “and one of our partners, Jeff, had been a lawyer with the military. They wanted him back as a defense council for the first Al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo.”
To do the job as a civilian, Jeff needed to be a part of a law firm. “He did some research and found that no state allowed non-lawyers to be part of a law firm, but the District of Columbia did,” explains May. That’s how Blue Law, International, became a licensed limited partnership in Washington D.C.
May mentions proudly that Jeff was one of the people who argued, successfully at the time, before the Supreme Court that the Guantanamo prisoners should be tried in a military tribunal.
Calling themselves “sister companies,” Blue Force, LLP, and Blue Law International, LLP, now have seven partners and over 30 full and part time employees. Blue Force provides government, industry, and research and development clients with high quality expert assistance to enable the success of innovative and complex initiatives.
The company specializes in “values-based, in-depth, strategic, operational and tactical subject matter expertise, emphasizing command and control, joint and coalition mission planning, exercise and experimentation, management and assessment, program and acquisition management support, stability operations, modeling and simulation support, and information warfare planning.
The combined talent of the company’s two divisions, “make us the partner of choice to foster and further advance the common interests of the Department of Defense and the Department of State,” says May.
“The Department of Defense and the Department of State can be like two different worlds. They sit in the same room and talk past each other. It’s like they are speaking two different languages. We understand both sides. We are the nexus between the Defense and State,” he explains.
As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wind down, May sees the biggest opportunities for the company in development areas such as rule of law and anti-corruption. “There will be fewer players at DOD, but they will still need our help,” he says. “As long as we offer high quality service at a competitive price we will get work.”
No matter what the job, a consultant must take deliver what he says he’ll deliver. “We work hard to put the customer’s needs high on the list and take care of that customer,” says May. “Of course you are contractually bound to comply with a statement of work but I’ve never seen a statement of work written that captures everything that needs to be done on a particular job. We do what the customer needs to get done. It’s kind of like the mission focus when you are on active duty.”
He tells his consultants that their job is “to become an indispensible part of the company. We don’t say we don’t do that. If someone needs you to put a couple of extra hours in to get something done, the answer is ‘Yes, I can.’ It’s all about engaging with the customer to understand what they need and taking care of it.”
