Many environmental technology vendors who've benefited from OST dollars in the development of their environmental technologies face the daunting challenge of breaking into the DOE market. They encounter obstacles related to their inexperience with DOE. Global Environment and Technology Enterprise (GETE), through its cooperative agreement with OST, is educating these mostly small research and development companies and helping them come to grips with the facts of life at DOE sites. Stuart Claggett, a GETE program manager, says that GETE serves as an advocate for small business technology vendors, who don't generally have the know-how or resources to tackle a meaningful piece of the DOE market. "We give them a true and real picture of how to get involved with DOE. They don't have the marketing budget to go everywhere within DOE, to make all the marketing contacts, and to understand what DOE is, how to get business, and what the real market is."

Rad Elec's E-PERM^® electret ion chamber (see previous article) is one of approximately 30 technologies that GETE has in its portfolio of technologies to introduce to potential users at DOE sites. Smart Sampling^TM, a product of Sandia National Laboratories (see article, page 14), is another technology that has recently been taken under GETE's wing. Past benefactors of GETE assistance include ResonantSonic^®, an environmental drilling system that uses high-frequency, high-force vibrations. Don Moak, vice president of Water Development Hanford, credits GETE with helping his company commercialize ResonantSonic^®.

Focusing on real, near-term needs
Claggett said a real breakthrough in helping technology holders gain a foothold for their technologies at DOE sites occurred in spring 1997 when Site Technology Coordination Groups began identifying site needs. "The exercise of having the STCGs pull together the needs has produced more information than has ever been available to small businesses·. Many site problems have only recently been characterized and reviewed so DOE can say with confidence, `These are our problems and their parameters in terms of concentrations.' Before the right technologies can be picked, you have to know what the problems are."

Using STCG-identified needs as starting points, GETE's representatives at DOE sites validate these needs and propose other undocumented needs for STCG consideration. Claggett said that some remediation needs won't be structured into solicitations for some time to come. For companies struggling to stay in business, long-term needs aren't likely to be their saviors. GETE is targeting "near-term needs that are within two years of a possible procurement coming out. We're working with companies on their deployment plans to match near-term opportunities with technologies."

Outreach
While GETE is actively working with technology developers to get technologies implemented at DOE sites, the Global and Environmental Technology Foundation (of which GETE is a part) is supporting small technology vendors through its TechKnow database of environmental technologies. Available on the Internet, TechKnow allows any technology vendor to enter information on his/her technology. Users can access the database directly (http://www.techknow.org) or through Global Network of Environmental Technology (http://www.gnet.org), an interactive Web site that provides news, comprehensive data on environmental technologies, and business opportunities.

For more information on the GETE program, contact Stuart Claggett at (703) 750-6401, or sclaggett@getf.org.