The Boeing Co. plans to transfer several hundred engineers based in Renton to the company’s Everett plant in a move designed to improve collaboration between plane designers and builders.
The Renton Reporter obtained an e-mail sent last week by Mike Denton, vice president of Commercial Airplanes Engineering, to managers outlining the details of the move.
“We expect closer collaboration to help improve quality, identify risks early and strengthen development decisions,” Denton wrote in his e-mail.
The move will happen in phases, starting early this year and finishing in the third quarter of 2010, he wrote.
The e-mail did not specify how many engineers would be affected by the move.
However, Bill Dugovich, a spokesman for the union that represents the engineers, said Thursday 669 members will be transferred.
“That is a significant number,” he said.
The union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) Local 2001, represents 2,074 Boeing employees in Renton.
Denton in his e-mail wrote that the transfer doesn’t affect “737 program engineering teams, which will remain in Renton.”
Dugovich said the engineers now work in Boeing’s 10-16 on North Sixth Street between Park Avenue North and Garden Avenue North. The transfer will empty the building of employees, he said.
According to Denton’s e-mail, the engineers will move into either the 40-84 or 40-85 buildings at the Everett plant.
The transfer could hurt Renton’s economy, especially if the positions aren’t backfilled with other employees, said the city’s top economic development official.
The city first became aware of a transfer when Alex Pietsch, administrator of the Department of Community and Economic Development, viewed a posting on the Twitter social network from SPEEA that 800 engineers were transferring to Everett.
“That would be like one of our Top 10 or Top 15 employers moving,” said Pietsch.
He didn’t have further confirmation of the transfer until contacted by the Renton Reporter on Thursday.
Bernard Choi, a Boeing spokesman, said Thursday the company plans to move other employees into the 10-16 building, but he didn’t have an exact number.
Denton in his e-mail wrote “the move also will help us cut facilities’ costs by contributing to reductions in the Boeing ‘footprint,’ which supports the company’s long-term asset utilization strategy.”
Pietch said Thursday Boeing “has not made us aware of any land or buildings that will be declared surplus in the near term.”
Boeing Commercial Airplanes is headquartered in Renton, at the company’s Longacres site.
The engineers’ union “is taking a close look” at how the transfer will affect its members, Dugovich said.
“That is a big shift when you move that large of a group from Renton to Everett,” he said.
The union has analyzed how the transfer would affect the employees’ commutes. The move will increase the commute by 25 miles or more for 360 of the 669 engineers affected, he said.
Choi, the Boeing spokesman, said the idea is to get the engineers near the development programs. The Everett plant is gearing up to build Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner.
A trip to the factory from Renton now takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic, he said.
Denton, in his e-mail, writes that the company “recognizes the move will present challenges for people whose commutes will be longer, and we didn’t make this decision lightly.”
