AVIATION SECTOR GETS BIG LIFT FROM PRATT & WHITNEY
Advance Manufacturing
http://www.advancedmanufacturing.com/Jan05/worldwatch.htm
November / December 2004
 Puerto Rican officials say they hope a recent investment by the
aircraft engine firm Pratt & Whitney to build an aerospace
engineering centre on the island will be another step to creating a
knowledge-based economy — including the birth of a homegrown
aerospace cluster.
Pratt & Whitney, through its Indian engineering partner Infotech
Aerospace Services, will spend $28 million over three years to
develop the centre. Officials hope the facility will eventually lead
to 400 well-paid local jobs for island engineers.
Pratt & Whitney’s VP of engineering Paul Adams says the centre’s
staff will work on engineering services for the company, including
product definition, structural modeling, heat transfer, CAD/CAM, CMM
and NC machine programming and systems analysis.
Puerto Rico was an easy choice for Pratt & Whitney, which was
looking for a lower cost alternative for its engineering work. The
island’s engineers work for about 30 percent less than their U.S.
counterparts, and Puerto Ricans are officially U.S. citizens, which
opens the door to lucrative Department of Defense contracts which
are usually off-limits to non-U.S. workers.
Another plus for Puerto Rico is the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez,
which boasts one of the top electrical engineering faculties in the
United States. Pratt & Whitney has a long tradition of hiring UPR
grads out of university and offering them employment on the
mainland; however, with the opening of this facility, young Puerto
Rican engineers will have an opportunity to practice their
profession at home. “Our relationship with the university was key to
this project,” says Adams. “We’ve also worked with the school to
create an aerospace certificate program to develop a homegrown pool
of talent for the centre.” The program opened last fall and has been
inundated with interest from engineering undergrads.
Puerto Rico has a well-developed manufacturing sector, with a
pharmaceutical cluster rivaling Ireland and Israel and a burgeoning
computer assembly sector. The island’s economic development agency
PRIDCO wants to convert the considerable intellectual talent in
Puerto Rico to develop a knowledge-based economy.Back to Press Room /
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