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The Hartford Courant

'Outsourcing Partner' Gives Pratt A Boost

BARBARA NAGY; Courant Staff Writer

September 3, 2003
Copyright ©2003 The Hartford Courant. All rights reserved.

An Indian engineering company has opened a development center in Puerto Rico, giving it a new location to do design work for Pratt & Whitney, the companies said Monday.

Infotech Enterprises Ltd. already does work in India for the East Hartford-based jet-engine company and other United Technologies Corp. divisions. Pratt owns 18.4 percent of Infotech.

The Mayaguez center opened last week with 20 employees, according to Infotech.

A press release from the commonwealth of Puerto Rico suggests that employment could grow to 450 by the end of 2007 as Infotech expands its client base.

The office in Puerto Rico would focus on providing services to North American defense contractors, according to Infotech.

The company said it was locating in Puerto Rico because Pratt, apparently for security reasons, wanted it to be a ``global outsourcing partner'' with multiple offices.

``Our primary focus here is to develop a highly competitive supplier for key technical and engineering services,'' Pratt's chief engineer, Paul Adams, is quoted as saying in an Infotech press release.

A Pratt spokesman said Monday that Infotech's expansion wouldn't affect the size of Pratt's 4,000-person technical workforce in Connecticut.

The company has said it is only outsourcing lower-level work, such as drafting, modeling and software-code verification.

But the practice has been controversial because it potentially reduces the amount of work done by local engineering contractors and because of fears that Pratt will expand the type of work it sends overseas.

Infotech opened the new office in a Mayaguez industrial park with the help of a $250,000 incentive from the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the government said.

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