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VRHabilis in the News

VRH receives “Veterans Work Award” from TVBA for 2014!

VRHabilis was humbled and flattered to learn the company had been chosen to receive the “Veterans Work Award” at the 4th Annual Business and Education Showcase sponsored by the Tennessee Veterans Business Association (TVBA).  This award recognized the efforts VRHabilis makes towards hiring veterans and in particular those who have been disabled as a result of their military service.  Close to 95% of the field crews and all project management staff at VRHabilis are veterans and/or retired from the US military.

Tennessee Veterans Business Association was formed four years, built on four cornerstones: Marketing, Government Advocacy, Education and Training and Veteran Employment Issues.  The TVBA is a one of a kind business association and the only entity across the country that brings these four vital elements together on behalf of veteran owned businesses and the veteran job seeker.

VRHabilis is a charter member of this fine, dynamic organization and is very grateful to the recognition received through this award.

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VRHabilis in the News

Made it to the Final Four!

Hooyah! With your support, VRHabilis has advanced to the Final Four in the Small Business Tournament of Veteran Champions! We are thrilled, humbled and so grateful for your support.

But we’re not quite there yet. Voting continues through May 30. You can vote up to once per day through then. We’re asking for your votes to help VRHabilis spread the word that we’re here to help veterans, especially those with special needs, pursue the careers of their dreams. Visit vetchampstourney.com daily and vote often!

Here are the details from the U. S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s website:

After reviewing an incredible pool of entries from coast-to-coast, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program and Spike TV’s Hire a Veteran are proud to announce the Final Four of the Small Business Tournament of Veteran Champions.

With the help of thousands of votes from across the country, we’ve gotten this far. Now we need your help to select the winner! Cast your vote for the business you feel is the most veteran-friendly in America. You can vote up to once a day through May 30, 2013. The winner will be recognized at the Spike TV Guys Choice Awards, which airs on June 12, 2013, and will have a custom spot produced by and aired on Spike TV!

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VRHabilis in the News

VetChamps Tourney Interview

Hiring Our Heroes program and the Hire A Vet campaign by SPIKE TV named VRHabilis as one of eight finalists in the Small Business Tournament of Veteran Champions. The public now has the chance to vote at VetChampsTourney.com to help identify the most veteran-friendly small business in America.

A few reasons VRHabilis was selected are:

• Service-disabled veteran-owned small business
• 75% of full-time employees are veterans
• Volunteer and donate to numerous local and national veteran organizations

Watch this Google hangout video interview with Tom Rancich to learn more about the company and why they should be named the Champion of Veteran Friendly Small Businesses.

[mcw_jwplayer_video src=youtube video=eJ0wRUWfRTc width=600 preview=hangout-video.jpg]

A combination of public voting and a panel of judges will narrow the field down to four semifinalists and the same format will be used to select a winner. Voting for the Final Four continues through May 16, 2013, and for the champion through May 30, 2013. Judging for the tournament is based on criteria such as innovative recruiting and retention strategies for veterans, veteran community engagement and leadership as well as an ongoing commitment to hire veterans. The winning business will receive a custom spot produced by and aired on Spike TV.

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VRHabilis in the News

Hang Out with VRHabilis

Come join our Google+ Hangout Friday morning to chat with VRHabilis CEO and co-founder Tom Rancich about the company, the veterans who work with us, and how we work with veterans’ organizations. The Hangout starts at 11 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, May 10, 2013, and will run for 15 minutes.

This Hangout is being presented by The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program. It is part of their Small Business Tournament of Veteran Champions. VRHabilis is one of eight finalists for this national award.

We hope you can join us!

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VRHabilis in the News

VRHabilis Named Finalist for National Award Recognizing Veteran-Friendly Small Businesses

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program and Spike TV’s Hire A Vet campaign today named VRHabilis LLC one of eight finalists in the Small Business Tournament of Veteran Champions.

Small Business Tournament of Veteran Champions

“We had extraordinary entries from coast-to-coast, but VRHabilis’ commitment to our nation’s veterans set itself apart,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Schmiegel (ret.), executive director of Hiring Our Heroes. “These eight finalists have established themselves as national leaders for other small businesses to follow. VRHabilis deserves to be recognized for its innovative strategies to recruit and support the men and women who have served our country. ”

A combination of public voting and a panel of judges will narrow the field to four semifinalists and the same format will be used to select a winner. Voting for the Final Four continues through May 16, 2013, and for the champion through May 30, 2013. Judging for the tournament is based on criteria such as innovative recruiting and retention strategies for veterans, veteran community engagement and leadership as well as an ongoing commitment to hire veterans.

You can cast your votes at VetChampsTourney.com. You are allowed to vote up to once each day, so vote early and vote often! We appreciate your support.

Read the official press release (PDF).

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Current Projects

Camp Gordon Johnson

One of our current projects is a diving job at Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida. Here are a few pictures: Aristoteli and Jason keeping warm  on the boat , Rusty in his gear diving in the Gulf, and Aristoteli, one of our Dive Supervisors.

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About VRHabilis

VRHabilis at the TSS Conference in Dallas

Six members of the VRHabilis management team attended the recent Army Training Support System (TSS) Workshop in Dallas, TX. Despite the 110 degree weather, the group stayed cool manning the VRHabilis booth in the Exhibit Hall. Old friendships were renewed and new contacts were made. Attendees were fascinated with the underwater UXO work we do and had fun picking up the 45 pound dive helmet and imagining what it would be like to wear it through a work day. See you next year, TSS!

Tom Rancich, Scott Alogna, Dave Hayner with VCSG, Elliott Adler and Ron Madden
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VRHabilis in the News

Fellow Martha’s Vineyard veterans lend Jared Meader a helping hand

By Janet Hefler of the Martha’s Vineyard Times:

Last week veteran Jared Meader of Vineyard Haven experienced [the] “band of brothers” bond first-hand when fellow veterans Tom Rancich and Elliott Adler stepped up with a $5,000 loan to stop foreclosure proceedings on his home….

Mr. Meader shared his frustration and despair about possibly losing his home at a recent veterans’ support group meeting run by Tom Bennett, the associate executive director and senior clinical advisor at the Island Counseling Center.

Afterwards, Mr. Rancich pulled Mr. Meader aside and said he would talk to his business partner about helping the Meaders out.

“Tom said, hey, this isn’t charity; we all hit hard times, and I’m not going to see another veteran lose his house,” Mr. Meader recalled.

Mr. Rancich is a U.S. Navy veteran who spent part of his career as a SEAL dealing with disposal of unexploded bombs. He and his business partner Elliott Adler met in the Navy as classmates in explosive ordnance school.

After retirement from their military careers, Mr. Rancich and Mr. Adler started their own company, VRHabilis, in 2007. The “VR” stands for “veteran run,” and “habilis” is Latin for “work.”

Mr. Rancich said after he left the veterans’ support group meeting, he shared Mr. Meader’s story with his partner.

“Why don’t we help?” Mr. Adler immediately responded.

“I went to Jared and told him, we’re not a mega-corporation, but we’ll be damned if we’ll see you and your wife and kids put on the street for $5,000,” Mr. Rancich said. “And what we’d like to do is extend to you a loan for that amount, get you current, get the bank off your back and allow you to have a little breathing room, so you can have a chance to succeed.”

On May 5 he put a cashier’s check for $5,000 in Mr. Meader’s hands. The next day Mr. Meader paid his back mortgage payments to Bank of America and put a halt to foreclosure proceedings scheduled for May 18.

“I think that if I had not known Jared through Tom’s group, that would have been an impossible offer to make,” Mr. Rancich said. “But since we’ve sat there and cried at the table together, I was able to make the offer, and he was able to accept it in the vein that I was extending it, which was look, you’re a brother in arms, and one of our company’s core values is to try to help out disabled veterans.”

Challenges for returning vets

Mr. Meader and Mr. Rancich stopped by The Times office last week to share their story. Mr. Meader said he didn’t mind going public with it, in the hope that it would bring to light the problems that some returning veterans face, especially those with disabilities.

“One of my soap box issues, and this is repeated throughout our history, is the country is perfectly willing to go to war without an appropriate safety net for the guys coming back,” Mr. Rancich said. “And you just see an enormous divorce rate, an enormous alcoholism rate, and an enormous suicide rate because civilians are of the opinion that you have to have fought in the Battle of the Bulge or something like that to have post-traumatic stress.”

VRHabilis provides military range management, remediation, and emergency response. The company is currently under contract to help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in its survey and cleanup of World War II-era munitions from former practice sites along Martha’s Vineyard’s south shore.

Mr. Rancich and Mr. Adler share a kinship with disabled vets, since both of them qualified for that category from injuries during their years of service.

Mr. Rancich broke his neck and back in a helicopter crash in 1997. He said that because of superior care he received from therapists on the SEAL team, he was able to continue to serve out his 20 years.

“So one of our company’s goals is to take guys with traumatic brain injuries or missing limbs and use adaptive technologies or adaptive strategies to employ them in fields that they want to work,” Mr. Rancich said.

There’s lots more — read the full article at the MV Times website.

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VRHabilis in the News

VRHabilis speaks at underwater munitions conference

Tom Rancich, co-founder and CEO of VRHabilis, LLC, wrote an abstract that was selected for presentation at the Third International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions in Sopot, Poland, April 12-15, 2011. Here is the abstract as it appears in the official program:

Underwater Munitions Location, Mapping, Analysis and Removal

VRHabilis Diving Department is comprised of former US Navy Deep Sea Divers, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians, and US Navy Special Warfare (SEAL) and Surface Warfare personnel. VRHabilis has been conducting operations to locate, map, analyze and remove unexploded ordnance from rivers, lakes, tributaries and coastal oceans around the United States since August of 2008. In that time, VRHabilis has removed thousands of pieces of ordnance and analyzed hundreds of underwater acres of ordnance pollution.

Treatise: Underwater ordnance presents a unique set of challenges, as well documented and understood by members of the International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions (IDUM). VRHabilis understands this unique set of challenges and has successfully operated with them over the last four years. The reason that VRHabilis has been successful in our endeavors is that our personnel have over 300 years of combined experience operating in every type of maritime environment completing extremely complex operations. That experience is critical for the following reasons:

  1. The trend in the United States is to treat the underwater UXO problem the same as the land problem. This is fundamentally flawed. Not only must underwater sites be treated differently than land sites, but each underwater site must be treated differently, bringing to bear all possible solutions to develop the best course(s) of action. Though many sites will have similar assets applied to the solution, there will be no cookie cutter solution. Due to the dynamic nature of the underwater environment, an underwater UXO operation is distinctly unique from a land operation. UXO discussion on point one will juxtapose the VRHabilis Humpback Bridge Emergency Response with the Alderwood Lake Underwater UXO Sweep.
  2. As the environment is dynamic so must be the solution. Flexibility in planning and execution of the production operation is a necessity in underwater UXO activities. That fact requires a different type of work force; one trained and encouraged to innovate and keen to be involved in the planning process. Discussion on point two will be analysis of deep water operations off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
  3. The problem facing IDUM is a production problem; a production that must be safe, efficient, cost effective, and beneficial. The underwater UXO defense explosives, i.e., mines, in military operations. That expertise must be balanced with professionals with production experience. Discussion on point three will juxtapose shallow water mine operations in Desert Storm with the Martha’s Vineyard Time Critical Removal Action. The full development of this abstract will compile, analyze and compare years of successful experience in underwater operations and UXO removal. At the conclusion the audience will have a better understanding of problems encountered throughout the planning and execution of underwater UXO removal actions and subsequent solutions.

For more information and the other abstracts presented at the Underwater Munitions dialogue, download a PDF of the official program. Mr. Rancich’s abstract appears on page 22. We will publish a copy of the full speech as soon as it is available.

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VRHabilis in the News

VRHabilis called to identify rusted cannon shell

From the Martha’s Vineyard Times:

Alec Gale dredged up more than mollusks off Lobsterville Beach in the Martha’s Vineyard town of Aquinnah Wednesday. The fisherman found a rusted 40-millimeter cannon shell of the type used by World War II era aircraft.

Mr. Gale brought the shell to the dock in Menemsha Harbor, left it on a shed near the Texaco gas station and called police with news of his catch. Chilmark Police Sergeant Jonathan Klaren called Tom Rancich of West Tisbury.

Mr. Rancich is a veteran of the U.S. Navy, who spent part of his career as a Navy SEAL dealing with disposal of unexploded bombs. Mr. Rancich’s company, VRHabilis, is currently under contract to help the US Army Corps of Engineers in its survey and cleanup of World War II era munitions from former practice sites along the Island’s south shore.

When someone finds a bomb, authorities here notify Mr. Rancich, who determines whether the object is safe to move and store, or whether it is a live bomb that requires a controlled detonation.

After receiving a photo from Officer Klaren, Mr. Rancich advised him not to move the shell, which he later identified.

“The cartridge was sealed and intact, although the nose cone was seriously deteriorated,” Mr. Rancich wrote in a report to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

Mr. Rancich moved the cannon shell to a fenced-off location on the beach. That evening, the State Police bomb squad arrived and destroyed it in a controlled explosion.

Mr. Rancich said that although the area off Lobsterville was not used for training purposes, anecdotal reports from local fishermen are that there has been WWII airplane wreckage discovered in that area.

Read the full article.