Northrop Grumman Dedicates Design Center in Melbourne, Fla.

Dignitaries including Florida Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson participated in the dedication of Northrop Grumman Corp. Manned Aircraft Design Center of Excellence in Melbourne, Fla., on Friday, Sept. 21, 2013.

 

Scott kicked off the event, which also featured remarks by Nelson and company officials. Representatives from other federal, state, regional and local offices, and civic organizations also attended.

 

Northrop Grumman announced the creation of several centers of excellence around the country in March, for the purpose of improving its strategic alignment with its customers' need for increasingly innovative and affordable products, services and solutions. The company employs more than 1,200 people in Melbourne, and estimates growing by an additional 1,000 employees over the next four years as a result of the designation of the site as a center of excellence.

 

The company recently broke ground on a new 200,000ft² building at its current campus adjacent to the Melbourne International Airport. The new building will accommodate program management and engineering teams, as well as integration laboratories. The new building is scheduled to be complete in the summer of 2014.

 

Friday’s Northrop Grumman event came the same day that Florida labor officials released jobs data for August. That data showed Brevard County’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.5% in August, down from 7.9% in July and 9.4% in August 2012.

 

Brevard County, home to the Kennedy Space Center and the towns of Melbourne, Titusville, and other Space Coast communities that support it, has been hard hit by layoffs following the end of NASA’s Space Shuttle program in 2011.