By Mickey McCarter, HSToday Senior Washington Correspondent

Shortly after the decision by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to award its transportation worker credentialing program to Lockheed Martin Transportation Security Solutions, Carlaine Blizzard, the company's vice president of secure enterprise solutions, shared her insights into the contract award with HSToday.us.

Blizzard noted that Lockheed Martin was only several days into the contract at press time and had not yet received a debrief from TSA on the factors that gave the company the edge in securing the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program, which will enroll an estimated 750,000 transportation workers over an 18-month period.

"We think our strongest asset was that we had been doing this sort of work for quite some time," Blizzard revealed. "We have rolled out to a lot of locations quickly post-9/11. In the Strategic Airport Security Rollout program, within a matter of 90 days, we were at 429 different airports, handling security with that credential. With Registered Traveler, we also are in different airports.

"The other things we did here was to understand airports and seaports are different than each other," she continued. "We spent a lot of time with the port stakeholders to make sure that we understood what was different."

One example of how to handle seaports differently than airports arose when Lockheed Martin spoke with ports stakeholders who pointed out that port travelers often do not have ready computer access, unlike many airport travelers. This detail prompted Lockheed Martin to offer easy enrollment options for TWIC both online and offline.

Blizzard stressed that her company's careful research into the details of such matters demonstrated that it understood its customers concerns and would work to implement satisfactory solutions in support of the TWIC program.

The Lockheed Martin TWIC team includes Irish credentialing company Daon, Datatrac, Deloitte Consulting LLP, MAXIMUS Inc., and LexisNexis Special Services Inc.

Other prime contractors competing for the TWIC contract included BearingPoint Inc., Computer Sciences Corp., Electronic Data Systems Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Motorola Inc.

Various reports have indicated that the price of Lockheed Martin's bid, at $70 million, was far below its competitors.