Home-based firm a world class player
Edmonds Beacon

Sound & Sea Technology's latest feat - winning a five-year $29.5 million contract from the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center in Port Hueneme, California - is just the latest in a string of successes for the Edmonds home-based company.

“It's hard to imagine that a small technology business could have a worldwide presence,” says Sound & Sea principal Judith Meggitt. “But from our home in Edmonds, we coordinate a roster of engineers on commercial and government national security and marine engineering projects around the globe.”

The Naval contract calls for production of the Advanced Deployable System, a next-generation undersea surveillance system.

Judith and Dallas Meggitt formed their business in 1999 when they were both 56. Judith Meggitt had been laid off in the early '90s from Northrop Corporation in Southern California; Dallas was given a choice of moving or quitting when his employer, Raytheon, relocated to Rhode Island.

Instead the couple decided to stay in Washington state and start their own company.

Dallas' 30 years of experience in undersea systems installation combined with Judith's 25 years of administrative and management experience made them a formidable team.

“Together we have put project management, cost accounting, reporting, and administration systems in place to serve their government and commercial customers,” says Judith Meggitt. 

Sound & Sea Technology's first project was a $9,000 contract to design and set up a system to monitor communications cables, running through the Olympic Marine Sanctuary off the Washington coast, to ensure the cables were not damaging the environment.

Since then Sound & Sea has contributed to more than 100 projects involving design and installation of military and commercial undersea cable systems, acoustic trials of advanced marine equipment, remote sensor surveys of the seafloor, development of cable landing sites, and related work.

The firm has expanded operations from Edmonds to Ventura, California.

In 2002 the Meggitts contacted Michael Franz, a counselor with the Seattle Small Business Development Center, for business assistance. The SBDC is partly funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration to provide small businesses with no-cost confidential management and technical business assistance.

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