Companies form partnership to go after federal work

A Mount Pleasant small business has formed a partnership with Choate Construction to help both companies secure more federal work, and that partnership started paying off this week.

The U.S. Department of Defense announced Thursday that the Choate and Ikhana Inc. partnership that began in June has been awarded a $13.4 million contract to build two child development centers at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C.

Ikhana President Jeff Davis said the construction at Camp Lejeune is one of several contracts the new partnership is going after — and actually one of the smaller ones.

“We have at least another 10 on the books now,” Davis said. “Our goal is to bring a lot of work here in Charleston.”

Ikhana, which has three employees, has been doing single-source work since going into business in 2008. Ikhana is headquartered in Choate’s office on Belle Isle Avenue in Mount Pleasant.

Davis said he sought out Choate to mentor his company, which does design-build work and provides architectural, engineering design, consulting and construction management. Davis said that, in addition to working with the federal government, the company also has state and local government, and commercial, residential, educational, hospitality and retail clients. Because Davis is an American Indian — “Ikhana” means “intelligent design” in the Choctaw language — the company holds the status of being a minority-owned business.

“Once you get that certification, you have special preferences within the federal government,” Davis said.

The two child development centers at Camp Lejeune are expected to be completed by June 2011. More than $7 million in the contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

The U.S. Department of Defense said Ikhana-Choate-1 LLC beat out 40 other proposals for the child centers. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Mid-Atlantic in Norfolk, Va., is the contracting agency.