GES CEO Phillip Wendling shared stories of his business ventures and the importance of following your passions during a visit with local students.

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The 5th Annual Entrepreneur Awards honors the skill, courage, and determination it takes for entrepreneurs to create a business out of an idea. The Awards celebrate the hard work and inspiring stories of many outstanding North Alabama entrepreneurs doing great things in our community.

Remarkable entrepreneurs are equally driven by their “why” as they are by their motivation to succeed. Since 2016, The Entrepreneur Awards has celebrated the compelling stories of these individuals and their success!

Phillip Wendling, President and CEO of Government Energy Solutions, Inc. was recognized as a finalist for the Veteran Entrepreneur Of The Year category.

In attendance was Phillip Wendling President and CEO, His wife Mandy Wendling, Michele Morris V.P. of Finance and Business Administration, and Scott John, V.P. of Operations.

A topic that comes up frequently among those of us in the government contracting sector is the value of attending conferences and concern about getting a return on the investment. Phil Wendling, President & CEO and Jay Newkirk, Corporate Strategy VP of Government Energy Solutions, Inc. both attended the National Veterans Small Business Engagement (NVSBE) held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, TN, this past December. This well-planned event focused on veteran-owned small businesses and in fact was very valuable.

The VA has decided to support veteran-owned small businesses by assuring that 15% of their annual contracting dollars go to veteran-owned businesses. The conference was structured in such a way so as to encourage these companies to attend.

The NVSBE is the premier and largest federal procurement event of its kind and enables business networking among procurement-ready suppliers. This year’s event was focused on procurement opportunities pertaining to Information Technology Services and Medical & Specialty Supplies Services.

The event was structured as a very large “Matchmaking” event, with 2,500 attendees. The registration process required profiling the company you were representing in sufficient enough detail so that the event facilitators’ software could find “company to company matches” and “company to VA representatives” matches.

So during the registration process attendees could access the VA software system and create a schedule for attending Basic Opportunities Sessions and could schedule follow-up small “round table” engagements with VA Reps with opportunities, including potential colleague companies that could become partners in order to pursue an opportunity.

It was a whirlwind two days with learning sessions occurring simultaneously with ongoing networking. The event offered attendees extraordinary opportunities to meet VA contract managers and contract specialists to discuss specific upcoming contracts while simultaneously networking with other companies that could become teaming partners.

We came away from the event with valuable VA representatives’ contact information and a stack of company business cards. It was such an influential event that it had the effect of redirecting the company I was representing to adjust their new business development strategy for 2020.

We can’t recommend this positive experience enough. The hashtag used on Twitter was #NetworkConnectGrow and this theme was evident throughout the conference. We plan to attend again next year.

GES is pleased to announce our newest team member, Marie Hutton.

Marie joined GES on November 13, 2018, as our Facility Security Officer, reporting to Phil Wendling, President & CEO.

Marie has more than 25 years of experience as a Facility Security Officer for both large and small businesses.

In her spare time, Marie enjoys crochet, quilt making and cross stitch.  Welcome aboard Marie!

GES’s Roger Herdy, C.E.M., was a speaker at the recent Power Grid Defense Symposium held in Huntsville, Alabama. This symposium and conference was about the status and challenges of the electrical power grids that supply our nation. He was asked to speak about GES’s involvement in a group called Energy Huntsville (where he is Director of the Membership and Sponsorship committee), which was started by the Mayor of Huntsville to help bring business to town (GES’s Jay Newkirk is also the Executive Director for Energy Huntsville).

Roger was also asked to talk about some of the electrical power generation technology for “Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Brayton Cycle” where GES has been working with Sandia National Laboratories over the last several years, and its applicability to resilient power grids.