Nomad lands big purchase agreement

More good news for Nomad Global Communication Solutions, the fast growing Columbia Falls company on U.S. 2 north of Glacier Park International Airport.

Eleven-year-old Nomad and several other companies were awarded a five-year contractual buying agreement with the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support with a $382.5 million ceiling. The agreement was announced Sept. 19 and runs through Sept. 18, 2018.

“What this is, is a mechanism for us to be able to sell more to the government,” said Clay Binford, Nomad’s vice president of sales and marketing. “Our anticipation is that with this more in-depth exposure, it will give us the ability to acquire more contracts.”

Nomad’s history has become a Flathead legend. Four raft guides in their 20s — Will and Seth Schmautz, of Kalispell, Shane Ackerly, of Bigfork, and Binford, of Boise, Idaho — found themselves in 2001 transporting firefighters to the Moose Fire in Great Northern Raft Co. buses.

Recognizing the communication problems fire crews experienced up the North Fork gave the four men the idea for a mobile command center that would connect fire crews with incident commanders and other resources miles away.

In 2002, the four went to work in a barn near Creston. All four had strong information technology backgrounds, but Binford’s focus in college was content and Seth Schmautz’s was chemistry, Will Schmautz was a biology major with a master’s in education, and Ackerly studied math and physics.

By the time the 2003 fire season swept across Northwest Montana, Nomad had its first mobile command center ready for operation. Binford said the command center was dispatched up the North Fork to the Wedge Canyon Fire after incident commanders there found they couldn’t receive faxes over satellite.

The company turned it first profit that year, but eight years after it started, Nomad recognized that less than 5 percent of their business was coming from firefighting and about half was coming from military contracts — about the same today.

Nomad’s mobile turn-key incident command stations have been deployed to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, the East Coast after Superstorm Sandy, and to tornado-ravaged the Midwest.

Connecting satellite communication with landlines, radios and cell phones helps incident commanders stay in contact with various off-site resources as well as nearby emergency personnel. This proved particularly important after Hurricane Katrina knocked out so many cell phone towers along the Gulf Coast.

“Integrated communications is what we excel at,” Binford said.

Nomad secured a U.S. Army contract in 2008 to create mobile classrooms for the Army’s Master Gunner System. The company steadily grew from about 20 workers in 2009 to more than 50 by 2010, operating out of a 25,000-square-foot facility on U.S. 2.

Nomad landed a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2010 to send mobile command centers on disaster-response missions across the U.S. The company built fifteen 45-foot long command centers that could operate for 72 hours without refueling. Many ended up on missions related to Superstorm Sandy.

Backed by contracts secured with the Navy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Aviation Administration and other federal agencies, Nomad received a $652,500 state grant from the Big Sky Economic Development Trust Fund in 2012 for equipment purchases and worker training.

Their goal to expand Nomad and create 87 new jobs continues today, Binford said. The company that began in a barn has become a recognized leader and is touted as an “economic engine” in the Flathead economy.