A Conversation with Richard “Mac” McNamara, former Executive Director, NAVSEA PEO for Submarines and SBIR advocate

UTIC Intersections–Conversations with Ocean and Undersea Tech Leaders: Conversations with influential leaders in the undersea technology community, soliciting their industry input, guidance and mentorship.

Richard McNamara is a recognized Navy acquisition and submarine systems executive with a forty-year distinguished civilian career with the Navy. Starting his Navy career as a Northeastern University Co-op student with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center New London Laboratory. he graduated  from Northeastern University with a mechanical engineering degree.  After a move to NAVSEA he worked his way up in the Combat Systems community including introducing digital systems and Tomahawk to the submarine community. Following a year on Capitol Hill as a Legislative Fellow in the United States Senate he returned to NAVSEA to senior acquisition and procurement leadership roles in program management, research, and systems engineering, ultimately joining the Senior Executive Service. At the culmination of his career, Mac served as Deputy Program Manager for the Virginia Class Submarine and as Executive Director, PEO Submarines. As a leader in defense acquisition, he managed over $1 billion in successful Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) transitions and was named DOD Small Business Program Manager of the Year in 2002. Mac has been at the forefront of undersea innovation, helping bring Tomahawk cruise missiles and the SSGN conversion program to the submarine fleet. For his work, Mac has been recognized with the Presidential Rank Award, Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, Naval Submarine League Distinguished Civilian award, SBIR Career Achievement Award, and NDIA VADM Weakly Award. Mac retired from government service and is currently Principal of RRM & Associates, LLC.

We asked Mac for his thoughts on the power of the SBIR Program:

What is the power of Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) for both the government and the small business supplier?

The financial implications grow at each Phase, meaning the 10 page Phase I proposal can lead to a $2M Phase II and a second Phase II contract  with matching money for $4M, resulting in $6.240M for important research and tech. Also, there is no expiration date, and if the idea does not catch on in Navy it can be marketed to any other of 11 participating Federal Departments participating in the government and vice versa.

All this, while the small business’ commercial market remains intact thanks to the SBIR intellectual property protections. In short, the vehicle’s procurement speed and power are complemented by already available funding, making the SBIR a very attractive procurement tool for all parties. 

What are the most significant challenges with executing SBIRs?

Even the best acquisition vehicles have their challenges, and one of the biggest challenges related to the SBIR is the time to contract. It is a chronic problem for both the small business and Program Managers alike, but it is still much faster than traditional methods.  

Some of the timelines to consider with the start of a SBIR: from when the SBIR topic is advertised to submission is 60 days, and the time to evaluate and select the winners is by law no more than 90 days. Then, the desired (but not required by law) time to award is 90 more days.  Normally, this is 90 days from selected advertisement to actual contract award.  

Once started, there are other timelines to consider: at the Phase I six month mark a final report is due along with briefing on if and how the small business wants to take this work into a Phase 2.  Based on those items, a selection is made and $100K option exercised to keep the team together until the $2M Phase II is actually in place. Timing wise, that part of the process can be as short as 90 days when the  Phase II is awarded and will have a  duration of 24 -36 months. For a small business, time without funding is problematic.  

An important note: a second Phase II can be awarded in about 4 months. This second Phase 2 can be a savior for a Program Manager who might have an emerging requirement, or to help reduce risk by introducing a second source. This can also be used to solve an obsolete item problem. Where else can a Program Manager get access to $2M in funding and a contract in 4 months? Nowhere!  

Timing challenges can also creep in during a Phase III SBIR, as this Phase is typically a regular FAR-based sole source contract and can take between 7 months to 22 months to ‘close’ based on my own recent real-world project observations and Contracting Office workload., The right funding and timing recipe can accelerate the process to get Phase II contracts (first or second) in place which buys the time to concurrently get the Phase III SBIR award in place.   

So, in short, time is the issue. And timing challenges can be exacerbated not just by the process but also by poor planning by the acquiring customer! 

What would be your advice to a company looking to advance its technology through the SBIR program?

Small businesses need to “propose” in order to win.  They do not always need to have a new technology, but an innovative application of technology. So, here are some thoughts to help small business prepare. A small business should:

• Identify what you want to work on and find a sponsoring organization you want to work with
• Research that organization, go to events, meet people, and understand their needs
• Discover what your home state offers for small business assistance in terms of proposal writing, rules of government SBIR compliance, assistance with CMMC compliance, due diligence competency on investors and ownership, etc. 
• Look into the great SBIR coaches who run local, regional or state-hosted workshops—and consider engaging those coaches 
• Finally, look for a topic you want to win, or 
• Look for an “open” topic  -where you can define the problem ,identify the organization responsible for it and  propose your solution.  

It is important to note that in this new, accelerated environment, the DoD/DoW now will be releasing new topics every month that include traditional topics, direct-to-Phase 2 topics, open topics, etc., and these topics will be coming from every part of DoD.   

One last point for small businesses to consider is the evaluation criteria for the SBIR, which includes the review of the concept/idea, the qualifications of the team and the commercialization opportunity (transitioning to the Navy). I bring this up as commercialization is often a sticking point because the small business offeror may have no idea what the commercialization landing pad could be for their researched innovation, hence the need to know your customer! 

Is SBIR worth the time and effort for the small business?

This one is easy to answer as the numbers tell the story: Since 2022 Navy has successfully Transitioned over $1B each year.  Most recently in FY25,  Navy has awarded $1.6 Billion in Phase III SBIR contracts. The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) in particular has awarded over $900M of that total. For context:

• Phase I awards – 1 in 8 offers are awarded
• Phase II awards – 1 in 2 are awarded
• Phase III award opportunities can be significant

In short, the answer is yes, it is worth the time and effort for small business!