Location · Portsmouth
Portsmouth IT consulting: networking, compliance, automation
Shipyard and industrial-services work is unforgiving. Downtime is hours, not minutes. We rip out the integrations that broke quietly and wire the ones your dispatchers actually open.
Three short sentences. The rest of this page is the longer version of the same idea.
Local economy snapshot
Portsmouth is anchored by the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, which, despite the name, sits in Portsmouth on the Elizabeth River. NNSY is one of four public US Navy shipyards and the oldest, running heavy maintenance, overhaul, and modernization on the Atlantic Fleet's nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Around the shipyard sits the densest concentration of ship-repair industrial services on the East Coast: BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair runs a major commercial yard on the Portsmouth waterfront, Colonna's Shipyard sits across the river, and a long tail of mid-sized industrial suppliers, machine shops, marine electrical specialists, coatings contractors, and rigging operators feeds both the public and commercial yards.
On the freight side, Portsmouth Marine Terminal and the APM Terminals at the Virginia International Gateway sit in Portsmouth and pull a drayage corridor that overlaps Norfolk International Terminals on the other side of the Elizabeth River. The IT pain for a Portsmouth operator is two-shaped: the defense suppliers and ship-repair industrial-services firms carry CMMC and DFARS flow-down language, and the port-logistics operators carry the same TMS-WMS-dispatch gap as Norfolk and Chesapeake. Most Portsmouth operators we score run $3M-$40M in revenue with 20-200 employees.
The landmark we look at on the drive in
Norfolk Naval Shipyard sits on the Elizabeth River. The name is a historical artifact. NNSY is in Portsmouth, has always been in Portsmouth, and the public-facing branding has not caught up. Most of our Portsmouth work feeds the NNSY ecosystem or the BAE-Colonna's commercial yard alongside. The shipyard is the gravity well; everything industrial in Portsmouth orbits it.
What we score in a Portsmouth operator
The CTGA framework scores your business 100-900 across four pillars: Controls, Technology, Growth, Adoption. For a Portsmouth defense supplier or ship-repair industrial-services firm, the Controls pillar is load-bearing the same way it is for a Newport News supplier. We map your environment against the NIST 800-171 control families and the CMMC Level 2 practice families, identify where Controlled Unclassified Information enters your boundary and where it leaves, and rank the gaps by what they cost you on the audit floor. The Technology pillar audits your GovCon stack (Deltek Costpoint, Unanet, JAMIS, or Procas on the ERP side; Microsoft 365 GCC High on the tenant side; Exostar, PreVeil, and the EDR layer your prime asked about) and rates the integrations as they exist, not as the vendor's slide deck claimed.
The Adoption pillar is where Portsmouth scoring differs from Newport News. Shipyard and industrial-services work runs on a dispatch tempo (work orders, parts requisitions, certified-welder callouts, crane scheduling, hot-work permits) that depends on the integration between the field-service or dispatch system and the back office. Most Portsmouth industrial-services operators we score have integrations that broke quietly six to twelve months ago, and the dispatchers have built workaround spreadsheets that nobody on the leadership team has seen. The Adoption score names that workaround layer first.
For a Portsmouth port-logistics operator the weighting looks more like a Chesapeake operator: TMS-WMS-dispatch with the driver app on top, integration debt across the freight stack, and SaaS sprawl on the broader operating tools.
What we score versus what we do not
We score, we name the gaps, and we ride the remediation. We do not run your help desk. We do not do industrial automation, PLC programming, or SCADA work; that is a different consulting category and we are not in it. We do not certify CMMC compliance; your C3PAO does that, and your RPO partner signs the official System Security Plan. We do not run your hot-work permit system; we wire it up to talk to dispatch.
What the engagement looks like at each tier
A typical Portsmouth defense supplier or ship-repair industrial-services firm with 20-200 employees and a CMMC clock running lives in Helix Engagement. At Engagement we come in as your CMMC squad, close the Controls gaps the Pulse score named, and ride the program until your C3PAO walks out signing the certificate. Quarterly re-score. Vendor coordination. Audit-prep documentation. The shepherding work that turns a gap list into a defensible posture. For port-logistics operators on the Portsmouth side, the Engagement work runs the integration rebuild across TMS-WMS-dispatch the same way it does in Chesapeake or Norfolk.
Helix Operate is the embedded seat for $10M+ Portsmouth operators carrying an active CMMC Level 2 deadline inside 12 months, a real ops bottleneck across multiple shipyard contracts, or an M&A diligence process where the acquirer is reading your SPRS score before they read your P&L.
Helix Pulse Retainer is the light-touch advisory tier for owner-operators who scored above 400 on the Pulse, want a steady hand on the quarterly re-score, and do not need a rollout squad. Most Portsmouth operators inside a real CMMC cycle land in Engagement, not Pulse Retainer.
We are sixty minutes from your shipyard gate
Portsmouth, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Newport News, Hampton, and Suffolk are sixty minutes apart at most. We come to you when it makes sense and we run on Zoom when the schedule does not allow it.
Services Portsmouth operators pull on most
How we engage in Portsmouth.
- CMMC Readiness
The primary service for defense suppliers and ship-repair industrial-services firms feeding NNSY or the BAE-Colonna's commercial yard. We score your CMMC posture on the Controls pillar (0-225), write the gap list ranked by what it costs you on the audit floor, and ride the remediation program until your C3PAO assessor signs the certificate. We score; your C3PAO certifies. Different verbs, honest scope.
- Operations Advisory
For port-logistics operators on the Portsmouth side of the drayage corridor and for industrial-services firms carrying integration debt across dispatch, work-order, and back-office systems. We rip out the integrations pretending to work and wire up the workflow your dispatchers will use. SMB workflow plus automation plus integration advisory, not industrial automation.
- CIO Services
The CIO seat for a multi-shop industrial operator, a growing ship-repair firm, or a regional 3PL that has outgrown its current stack at least once. The function that reads the vendor contract before you sign, sits at the leadership table when the call lands, and writes the 12-month roadmap your CFO can defend.
Industries we serve in Portsmouth
The clusters we work in Portsmouth.
- Government Contracting
Norfolk Naval Shipyard is in Portsmouth, and the supplier ecosystem orbiting it is one of the densest in Hampton Roads. CMMC Level 2 enforcement is the gravity well that pulls the rest of the IT program into shape. The same scoring model we run for Newport News applies to Portsmouth shipyard suppliers.
- Distribution
Portsmouth Marine Terminal and the APM Terminals at the Virginia International Gateway sit on the Portsmouth waterfront. The drayage corridor overlaps the Norfolk side; the TMS-WMS-dispatch gap is the same shape.
Questions
The things Portsmouth operators ask.
Yes. The name is a historical artifact: the yard has always been in Portsmouth, on the Elizabeth River. The "Norfolk" in the name refers to the Atlantic Fleet's home port rather than the city of the shipyard itself. When we run a Pulse for a NNSY supplier, the on-site visit is in Portsmouth.
No. Shipyard and industrial-services suppliers are the densest concentration, but port-logistics operators on the Portsmouth side of the drayage corridor, professional services firms in the downtown core, and a smaller tail of healthcare and trades operators also show up on the Pulse calendar.
No. Helix Stax scores CMMC readiness on the Controls pillar of the CTGA framework. We do not perform official RPO assessment work and we are not a C3PAO. Your RPO partner signs the official System Security Plan; your C3PAO certifies compliance. We give you a defensible position before the audit conversation starts.
Yes. That is a canonical Operations Advisory engagement. We map what talks to what across your work-order, dispatch, parts-requisition, and accounting stack, score the integration debt by what each break costs you in dispatch reassignments or invoice re-keying, and ride the rebuild.
No. Operations Advisory is SMB workflow plus automation plus integration advisory, not industrial automation. PLC programming, SCADA design, and process-control system integration are a different consulting category. We score the IT-side workflow; the OT side is its own scope.
The Pulse is free. The Pulse Retainer starts at $1,500-$3,500 per month for light-touch advisory. Helix Engagement runs higher and includes the squad-level CMMC remediation work most Portsmouth defense suppliers land in. Pricing bands are published.
Yes. Portsmouth is inside the sixty-minute drive radius. The Pulse is in-person if you want it that way, and we encourage on-site for shipyard-supplier engagements because the work-order and dispatch reality lives at the floor, not in the back office.
We serve all seven Hampton Roads cities: Portsmouth, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Newport News, Hampton, and Suffolk.
See how we'd score a Portsmouth operator
Sixty minutes, free, in person if you are in Portsmouth. You leave with your CTGA score, the three gaps that cost you the most on the audit floor or the dispatch board, and a written read on which retainer tier fits your operator profile. No pitch on the call. Whether you sell to Norfolk Naval Shipyard, to BAE or Colonna's, to a prime three tiers up, or run a drayage operation at the Portsmouth side of the port, the conversation is the same. We score, we name the gaps, you decide what happens next.
60 minutes · Free · You walk out with your top three gaps written down