Other People's Problems
Tony Perez-Falcon,
president of Reliable System Services, sees RSS as an engineering company
on call
By Anne Straub
Brevard Technical Journal
Although Tony Perez-Falcon is focusing on marketing his business at the moment, don’t expect the result to be an extensive client list or a branded product offered for sale. Neither scenario fits the business plan.
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RSS sees itself as an engineering department on call. It cultivates recurring business not by marketing a particular product, but by getting to know its clients’ needs and performing many different tasks for them. Perez-Falcon’s current goal is to add one or two to the roster so that more jobs are on the way as others are completed.
The business model has worked well with the U.S. Air Force 45th Space Wing in Brevard County. RSS served as an integration contractor several years ago on work for the Cassini launch to Jupiter. More recently, RSS was instrumental in replacing NASA’s remote weather station system used to gather weather data for launches. “They did it within budget and time and did a very good job,” said Dick Krizan, chief of range systems flight at the 45th Space Wing.
“He knows how to run a project,” Krizan said of Perez-Falcon.
RSS focuses on government contracts and has extensive knowledge in range instrumentation. Among its contracts, the company produced a mobile telemetry system for tracking launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It also made an automated instrument for Kennedy Space Center to use to measure the step between tiles on the space shuttle to make sure the surface is smooth. That job earned the company recognition for exceptional performance from the contractor.
The company got its start in 1986 when Perez-Falcon was working in government contracts at Melbourne-based Harris Corp. He and co-worker Emilio Power began talking about branching out on their own.
They capitalized on their experience in government work and focused in that sector, working on primarily large projects with some smaller jobs along the way. Both shareholders are Hispanic, and the company was recognized as an 8(a) company in 1989. RSS graduated from that federal program for small disadvantaged businesses in 1998.
The company now employs almost two dozen people, including five at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The work remains true to its roots in solving engineering problems. “That’s why we started the business,” Perez-Falcon said. “That’s what we love to do and what we’ve always done.”
Power concentrates on business development while Perez-Falcon is primarily responsible for marketing. He’d like to diversify the RSS client base, possibly taking on work in military simulation testing.
Perez-Falcon started developing his capitalist tendency early. As a youth in Cuba, he earned money by collecting and selling recyclable cans and bottles. Later, he progressed to working his own shoeshine business.
At 11, he’d visit neighbors’ homes or go to parks where people congregated to offer his services. Though the practice was common for Cuban children from poor families, that wasn’t the situation for Perez-Falcon. He was interested in the business aspect.
“I had to invest in the polish, box and tools. Initially I could only do black shoes. When I had some capital, I could invest in brown polish. You save some, invest some, and some stays in your pocket,” said Perez-Falcon. “It’s a true capitalist enterprise.”
Perez-Falcon also became interested in engineering while in Cuba. His father owned a bakery but liked to tinker in his spare time. His uncle worked on radios, and Perez-Falcon made a local radio repair shop one of his hangouts.
His parents orchestrated his departure from Cuba when Perez-Falcon was 14 years old. The family was on the waiting list for a freedom flight to the United States, but Perez-Falcon was running out of time as he approached his 15th birthday: Males aged 15 to 28 were not allowed to leave the country.
Three weeks before his birthday, his parents put Perez-Falcon on a one-way flight to Spain. He spent three months in a Catholic refugee camp there before heading to the United States in 1967, where he lived with family in South Florida.
A cousin took Perez-Falcon to school far away from the Cuban subculture. “I was very unhappy when he did that, but three months later I was very grateful because I could speak English,” he said. His parents and sister left Cuba and joined the family a year later.
To help pay for his education, Perez-Falcon rented a taxi and operated his own business while he attended community college. He graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering in 1975. The next year, he finished his master’s degree in the same field.
His first job was with Motorola in Fort Lauderdale, designing two-way police radios. He left after two years to move to a market where his future wife, Nancy, could find work. She and Perez-Falcon had met in college and continued to see each other even though her work as a chemical engineer took her to Alabama. They found jobs near each other in Houston, married and started a family. Their three children – Mimi, 23; Victor, 21; and Gloria, 19 -- are all in engineering.
The family left Houston, where Perez-Falcon had worked in designing oil well instrumentation, to return to Florida and be near both sides of the family.
Time for family and outside interests is important to Power and Perez-Falcon. “We’re of one mind. This business was meant to create the type of work we like and the type of work environment we like. We have very, very seldom exceeded 40 hours,” said Perez-Falcon, 50. That leaves time to spend with family, golf, travel and pursue one of his most recent interests: motorcycling. He and his son each bought motorcycles last year.
“One of our goals was to own our time so we could do what we want with our time,” Perez-Falcon said.
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