In today’s Everett Herald, Troy McClelland and Richard Cooper present a strong case for continued work on our state’s competitiveness. McClelland is president of Economic Alliance Snohomish County and Cooper, CEO of The Everett Clinic, serves as the Alliance’s board chair. They point out that, while it’s great for our economy that Boeing decided to build the 737 MAX here, we need to brace for the next competition.

…within a year, Boeing will make critical decisions on the future of its next big airplane program — the 777X, which will be an upgrade of the best-selling aircraft built here in Snohomish County. Once again, there are no guarantees that Boeing will keep the work here in Puget Sound.

They offer a sensible series of recommendations:

First and foremost must be increasing higher education opportunities to support the engineering, design and innovation demands of our region’s technical aerospace workforce. …

We must develop more and better K-12 programs teaching science, technology, engineering and math…

Continued advancements in transportation and infrastructure are vital for the continued growth of aerospace, our nation’s largest export industry. This means investing in critical port infrastructure, our highways and mass transit. Our people and their products must be able to get from one place to another efficiently.

We must keep the cost of doing business here reasonable by streamlining permitting and regulations while maintaining our current set of aerospace industry incentives.

I urge you to read the whole thing, which goes into significantly more detail. They also point out the economic importance of the aerospace cluster – direct and indirect jobs, charitable giving, volunteerism.

The Research Council looked into the Boeing impact on our state in this 2009 report for the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy (WashACE). More recently, as we noted in this blog post, Boeing’s presence here is one reason the Puget Sound region is one of the “top 5” regions to watch for economic growth.

As the economy continues its slow march to recovery, we cannot take retention of our strongest regional assets – aerospace, software, technology – for granted. The competition is relentless and the stakes are high.