By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

James D. Ward, who for nearly a decade has served as the senior civilian official at the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston, has told his senior staffers that he plans to retire in April.

Ward announced at a Jan. 7 SPAWAR staff meeting that he was ending what has been a 31-year career of public and private service to the Navy.

“I have spent the last 12 years of my professional career serving SPAWAR Charleston, and I can tell you honestly that I would not have wanted to be anywhere else. I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished,” he told them.

Ward said his decision to retire came after extended discussions with family members during the holidays.

As technical director of SPAWAR Charleston, an organization estimated to have an annual $1 billion impact on the local economy, Ward is credited with anchoring the command’s global work force with netcentric systems and software engineering practices.

Ward has also been in charge of overseeing one of the largest single clusters of computer scientists and engineers in South Carolina, and the continued vitality of the organization is often cited as one of the reasons Google, among other businesses, chose to locate facilities in the Lowcountry.

According to Lonnie Cowart, public affairs officer for SPAWAR Charleston, more than 70% of its local work force is comprised of individuals with engineering or computer expertise.

So vital has SPAWAR Charleston been over the years that Angelou Economics, the Austin, Texas-based consultancy, said the region should pursue the advance security and information technology market for economic development.

Ward, a native of Hampton, Va., relocated to the Charleston area in 1996 during the consolidation of the Navy’s four East Coast electronics engineering centers.

In 1998, he was selected to head the consolidated organization’s Command and Control Systems Department and was responsible for the work of more than 450 government employees and multiple contractors engaged in the design, development, production and deployment of state-of-the-art command and control systems.

An electrical engineer who also holds an MBA, Ward always described SPAWAR as atypical when compared to most other government organizations. That’s because, unlike other federal agencies, SPAWAR has never received direct funding appropriations from Congress. Instead, it competes with the private sector and other government agencies for contracts.

“That gives us a different mindset,” Ward told the Charleston Rotary Club during an April 2007 presentation. “We have to stay competitive.”

Ward has lived by that mantra and insisted that his personnel did too.

In a study commissioned by the Secretary of the Navy, the consulting firm Booz Allen found that SPAWAR Charleston was the Navy’s most cost-efficient engineering organization when measured by factors such as workload in relation to overhead.

During his 2007 presentation to the Rotary Club, Ward said he prided himself on Booz Allen’s conclusion, saying that it recognized his staff’s signature strengths: competency, business acumen, innovation, agility and capability.

Among the SPAWAR Charleston innovations was an inflatable antenna that is much lighter than its predecessor and saves troops from carrying heavier equipment through the battlefield.

Ward also established a new “Purple Heart Professional” program through which SPAWAR Charleston hires injured combat veterans so that they can use their competencies to build meaningful careers.

Widely recognized for his proactive leadership and management style, Ward was the recipient of the Charleston-area Federal Executive Association’s Outstanding Manager and Executive Award in 2000. In April 2001, he received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award for his leadership in the integration of major elements of the Navy’s telecommunications infrastructure.

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@setcommedia.com.

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