Fortune 500 Falls Churchdefense contractor Northrop Grumman will build 38 data transport satellites for the U.S. Space Force‘s Space Development Agency under a contract valued up to $732 million as the agency builds out a space-based communications network.
The work, announced Monday by the agency, falls under Tranche 2 Transport Layer – Alpha, a prototype constellation that the agency is rolling out as part of its low-Earth orbit Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Denver-based York Space Systems will build 62 satellites under a $617 million agreement, bringing the total award up to about $1.3 billion.
The alpha constellation variant will provide encrypted communications for warfighters and provide missile warning, tracking and advance missile threats and supports the Pentagon‘s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) mission to provide “sensor-to-shooter” connectivity across the military branches into a single network. Monday’s announcement follows another, from August, in which the SDA announced $1.5 billion in awards, including about $733 to Northrop Grumman and about $816 million to Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, for 72 beta variants, with each company providing 36 satellites.
The first orbital plane of the alpha constellation is expected to be launched by Sept. 2026, the same month that the first beta prototype plane is expected to be ready for launch. The SDA has announced awards to Northrop Grumman for 132 satellites so far.
“Northrop Grumman, in partnership with our industry teammates, is fully committed to the Space Development Agency’s vision of fielding a next-generation, low-Earth orbit architecture connecting and protecting our warfighters wherever they serve,” Blake Bullock, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of communications systems, said in a news release. “Our Northrop Grumman team is bringing our deep Military SATCOM (satellite communications) experience to this mission, and we’re executing on our commitments.”
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the first satellites in the network, Tranche 0, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on April 2 to demonstrate the network’s feasibility.
Food and beverage distributor World Class Distribution has opened its nearly finished $275 million, 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center in Caroline County with 400 employees, the county’s board of supervisors announced Tuesday.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin initially announced the project in November 2022, at which time WCD expected to add 745 jobs. The company now plans to hire 1,000 employees, which would make it the largest employer in Caroline County, according to a news release.
“The opening of World Class Distribution is another step forward for the logistics industry in the commonwealth, one of North America’s premier supply chain destinations,” Youngkin said in a statement. “With plans to hire 1,000 employees, the company is well on its way and already providing opportunities for hardworking families in Caroline County.”
The 400 employees the company has hired so far are working on-site in the Caroline 95 Logistics Park in Ruther Glen while the remaining sections of the building’s interior are completed.
“World Class Distribution is another major new business in Caroline, hiring more citizens and creating even greater revenue for the county,” Caroline County Board of Supervisors Chairman Floyd Thomas said in a statement. “This is one of the businesses, along with … M.C. Dean’s 169,000-square-foot expansion, the Lingerfelt 325,000-square-foot building in Carmel Church and the $6 billion Amazon data center project near Thornburg that is making 2023 a banner development year for Caroline.”
Founded in 2009, World Class Distribution is a subsidiary of Tact Holding. It distributes food and beverage products, including canned foods, dry foods, candy, grocery, beer and wine, frozen foods and other refrigerated products. WCD manages 11 distribution centers throughout the country and has more than 4,500 employees in eight states.
Dominion Energy has passed another critical federal hurdle on its way to gaining approval to begin construction on its $9.8 billion, 176-turbine offshore wind farm 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management granted a favorable record of decision for the Richmond-based Fortune 500electric utility’s 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project Tuesday. The decision represents the final step in the National Environmental Policy Act review process for its construction and operations plan.
“Today’s decision balances the orderly development of OCS renewable energy with the prevention of interference with other uses of the OCS and the protection of the human, marine and coastal environments,” BOEM said in the record of decision. “A decision that balances these goals where they conflict and does not hold one as controlling over all others is consistent with the duties required.”
Also Tuesday, Dominion earned approval from the Department of the Interior for its construction and operation plan.
“The Interior Department is committed to the Biden-Harris administration’s all-of-government approach to the clean energy future, which helps respond to the climate crisis, lower energy costs, and create good-paying union jobs across the manufacturing, shipbuilding and construction sectors,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Today’s approval of the largest offshore wind project in U.S. history builds on the undeniable momentum we are seeing. Together with the labor community, industry, trribes and partners from coast to coast, we are aggressively working toward our clean energy goals.”
The final approval for the wind farm‘s construction and operations plan is expected to come from BOEM on Jan. 29, 2024, with Dominion slated to begin construction in May 2024. Once fully constructed in late 2026, the turbines will power up to 660,000 homes.
“Receiving a favorable record of decision from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is a monumental achievement for Dominion Energy and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind team,” Dominion CEO, Chair and President Bob Blue said in a statement. “More than a decade of work has gone into the development, design and permitting of CVOW. Offshore wind is a vital part of our strategy to provide our customers with a diverse fuel mix that delivers reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy.”
The project will be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm and aligns with a state mandate that the Richmond-based Dominion go carbon-free by 2045.
In mid-October, the first eight monopiles, the foundation posts for the massive wind turbines, arrived at Portsmouth Marine Terminal and state officials and Dominion executives celebrated their arrival from Germany Friday.
The monopiles, which are each about 272 feet long — about the length of a football field — and 31 feet in diameter, will be driven into the seabed. Each turbine, when fully assembled, will be 836 feet high.
Dominion is already operating two wind turbines off the Virginia Beach coast as part of a pilot project. The company said that more than 750 Virginia-based workers, about 530 of whom are in Hampton Roads, are working on the project or with businesses supporting it. Another 1,000 jobs are expected to be created to operate and maintain the turbines.
The record of decision will be published in the Federal Register later this week.
Michael Meyers is always looking for an advantage.
Like many in the meetings industry, the Greater Richmond Convention Center‘s general manager has seen his facility’s costs spike from inflation.
Likewise, the price tag to run conferences has increased, so planners and venues are striving to ensure a good return on investment for attendees. And to remain an attractive player in the conference-hosting game, you need to evolve your infrastructure and services.
“People want to make sure you’re maintaining your facility, adding technology that can benefit them,” Meyers says.
A late 2022 report from American Express estimated that costs of running conferences and conventions would increase by 1.5% to 3% this year, and price hikes are expected to continue in 2024 — particularly for food and fuel, according to a trend report from Tysons-based event technology provider Cvent.
Costs and budgets are planners’ biggest concerns, with 44% of planners reporting their event budgets will increase in 2024, according to an August survey of 533 meeting planners jointly conducted by Cvent and Northstar Meetings Group.
Since 2020, when the pandemic upended the hospitality industry, many Virginia meeting spaces have made upgrades that can make a difference when planners select venues. And pretty much since COVID vaccines were released in December 2020, meeting planners have been anxiously awaiting a rebound in business travel for conventions and conferences.
One anonymous respondent to the Cvent/Northstar survey said, “I am very concerned with the huge increases in prices of all aspects of accommodations, services, A/V, catering, transportation, all of the ‘destination’ fees, etc. Most of our clients cannot triple their meeting budgets from one year to the next. We’re between a rock and a hard place with future meeting sourcing, negotiations and contracting.”
Fresh coats of paint
Many conference venues have made updates in the past three years, some timed to coincide with an expected post-pandemic boost in business.
The Greater Richmond Convention Center added complimentary public Wi-Fi, fresh paint, new LED lighting and digital signage, a new digital sound system, and a renovated food hall.
The Virginia Beach Convention Center earned LEED recertification in 2021. The Embassy Suites by Hilton Hampton Convention Center received a multimillion-dollar upgrade with renovated rooms for the 295-room hotel — with more than 4,000 square feet of meeting space — next door to the Hampton Roads Convention Center. The National Conference Center in Leesburg received a makeover of its hotel rooms in 2021 and added technological upgrades.
“Cities and properties that have secured the most conventions and meetings have put a lot of effort into making sure they have unique amenities,” says Mike Dietrich, Cvent’s vice president of marketing. “This could mean adding more dynamic/flexible meetings space, state-of-the-art hybrid event technology, offering distinct menus, or even partnering with local vendors to provide customized experiences.”
Another big trend Meyers has noticed: a desire for outdoor meeting spaces. “Whether you build rooftops or host events outside the facility, you can add a little flavor, get folks outside and [avoid] keeping them locked inside for two or three days,” Meyers says. “I think that’s a trend that’s going to continue. Our industry is always looking for ways to add value to our customers.”
Improvements such as these seem to have helped the industry recover after the pandemic.
In its annual summer meetings outlook, Meeting Professionals International (MPI) reported that 52% of respondents have seen business return to pre-pandemic levels. Nearly 80% reported favorable business conditions heading into summer 2023.
“It’s clear that in-person meetings and conferences are steadily increasing in popularity, as people are eager for face-to-face interaction … and to reap the benefits that can only come from in-person meetings,” says Dietrich.
MPI’s summer outlook found that 82% of meeting professionals surveyed viewed live attendance for conferences as a positive, while only 17% viewed virtual attendance positively.
However, virtual options will likely never disappear, so planners must continue providing and growing opportunities for hybrid conference models. Venues raced to increase technology options during the pandemic to meet demand. Those improvements helped the state’s larger venues weather the pandemic’s economic ebbs and flows and allowed them to stand ready to offer hybrid modalities.
Meyers says business has continued to grow at the Greater Richmond Convention Center despite higher costs for convention customers due to inflation.
“It’s the reason why I believe that the industry is coming back strong,” says Meyers. “We’re seeing business quickly rebound, and this year we will be back to pre-pandemic levels with our activity. We’re in a healthy cycle.”
Not every organization has such a sunny outlook for the industry, however. An August report from business intelligence company Morning Consult concluded that business travel “will never return to [a pre-pandemic] normal.” Among its findings: Older business travelers have retired, and younger professionals who have entered the space are more cost-conscious and “in charge of their own booking and planning.”
However, Cvent found that 94% of travel managers felt optimistic about business travel activity. American Express found the return to in-person meetings grew more rapidly this year than many expected, with a stabilization forecast for 2024.
The willingness to invest in upgrades to conference capabilities and hotel offerings has helped Virginia’s meetings and conventions industry rebound in particular, according to Dietrich, who cites the state’s proximity to the nation’s capital and government business.
Top convention cities and venues are putting extra effort into “unique amenities” such as hybrid event tech, says Mike Dietrich, vice president of marketing for Tysons-based Cvent. Photo by Shannon Ayres
Convention centers and large meeting spaces across the state are convenient to airports and the Interstate 95 corridor. The Washington, D.C., market, including Northern Virginia — which Cvent ranked 11th for top meeting destinations in 2023 — remains a favorite for conventions due to its plethora of museums and cultural attractions. Visitors spent $30.3 billion in the commonwealth in 2022, an increase of 4.4% from pre-pandemic spending in 2019, according to Virginia Tourism Corp.
Mixing business with fun
Hotel revenues have increased and so have room rates, up 13.7% from 2019, according to a report from Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.
Northern Virginia’s lodging industry, which has historically been more reliant on business travel than other areas, continues to lag the rest of the state in hotel revenues and is the only region where the industry has not recovered from the pandemic. The region represented about 3.6% less of the state’s overall hotel revenues for July 2023 than in July 2019. Nevertheless, ODU still found Northern Virginia had a 23.8% increase in hotel revenue from 2022 to 2023, with an 8.9% increase in rooms sold.
The state has also benefited from business-leisure travel — aka “bleisure” — Dietrich adds. “Employees are eager to get out and see the world after years of remote work where they were mainly confined to their homes. Now, business travelers are jumping at the opportunity to convert their business trips into mini vacations, adding on some much-needed leisure time to the itinerary.”
Norfolk Convention and Visitors Bureau President and CEO Kurt Krause says he’s noticed a spike in hotel occupancies in the days before and/or after a convention.
“We have good cultural options: the ocean, great museums, the history at Colonial Williamsburg — everything one gas tank away,” says Krause. “People come early or stay later to experience the area, bringing their family along.”
Venues and planners offering robust digital options also are seeing increased interest from audiences, Dietrich says.
By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels, according to a Cvent study, so venues can capture customers by offering online booking. The percentage of event planners who are more likely to select a location if it offers online booking increased by 33% from 2022 to 2023.
He also has seen increased industry adoption of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to create everything from marketing emails to website content to RFP responses for sourcing venues.
Increasingly, planners also are seeking accessible options, Dietrich says. Closed captioning, language translations, and accessible website and registration experiences help reach a more diverse audience.
“Event professionals have continued to leverage technology to not only streamline the planning process but to also bring those digital elements into the in-person event to enhance attendee engagement and enable better event insights,” Dietrich says.
Hiring shortages persist
Meyers got a firsthand view of the state of meetings this summer in Pittsburgh. For the first time since the pandemic, Meyers attended VenueConnect, a conference and trade show for convention venue managers. The sessions featured forward-thinking topics — including multiple sessions on sustainability and diverse workforce recruitment — rather than focusing on rebounding from the pandemic.
But when Meyers and his colleagues gathered on the sidelines between sessions, the topic gravitated toward a significant industry challenge: hiring.
About 50.5 million American workers quit their jobs in 2022, breaking the “Great Resignation” record set in 2021 by 2.2 million, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many cited factors such as work-life balance, compensation, child care needs and workplace flexibility as factors. Meanwhile, the hospitality and food services industry, already battered by the pandemic, also saw higher quit rates last year than in 2021.
The leisure and hospitality industry added roughly 40,000 jobs in August 2023, an increase of about 8,000 jobs since July, according to federal data. But leisure and hospitality employment is still down 1.7%, or about 290,000 jobs, below February 2020. The industry’s unemployment rate is at 5.8%, among the highest levels of sectors measured by BLS.
“We saw a lot of experienced staff on the meeting planner side and on the venue side decide to leave the industry during the pandemic,” Meyers says. “Now you struggle on the venue side to hire people because this is a tough schedule with working nights and weekends in particular. We have to do some unique things like building better schedules, increasing wages and offering advancement and easing the burden on people who want a work-life balance.”
Dietrich says technology can also ease the sting of worker shortages. “Many hotels have also started to implement direct online booking options that help streamline the booking process, saving time for both event and convention planners and hotel managers,” he says.
Regardless of industry challenges, it hasn’t deterred plans for building new convention hotels and meeting spaces. American Express reported that 59% of its industry forecast respondents predicted there will be an increase in hotel rooms in 2024, with another 58% expecting a growth in meeting space.
Here in Virginia, a pair of hotels with meeting space opened on college campuses in April — The Highlander Hotel Radford and The Forum Hotel at the University of Virginia — and a hotel/conference center with 25,000 square feet of meeting space, the Virginia Guesthouse and Conference Center, is scheduled to open at U.Va. in 2025.
“We are optimistic about the current state of the economy and its outlook,” says Katie Murphy, senior marketing and communications manager for the U.Va. Foundation, which manages the university’s real estate. “Our models were built on a significant amount of university-related business, which gives us confidence in the Virginia Guesthouse’s position and its planned opening in 2025.”
Meanwhile, Meyers notes, Richmond’s city government is evaluating proposals for City Center, a 9.4-acre downtown “innovation district” that would include replacing the shuttered Richmond Coliseum with a hotel tower that could become the tallest building in Richmond. The minimum 500-room hotel would support business at the nearby convention center.
“It’s easier to solve a problem of [room and hotel shortages] when the industry is on an upswing,” Meyers says. “Getting this done [along with other hotels and meeting spaces coming online] will be a big benefit to us, the community and our region to have.”
Event planners and hospitality industry experts worldwide will converge upon Richmond to grow their professional networks, discuss the latest developments in the tourism sector and celebrate travel in Virginia during the 2023 VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit.
Taking place Nov. 12-14 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, the event will offer workshops and classes focusing on topics such as sports tourism, return-on-investment data, digital marketing, workforce development, accessibility and the outlook for the meetings and events industry. This year’s theme is “Get in the Game.”
Attendees will take part in general and breakout sessions on Monday, Nov. 13, and Tuesday, Nov. 14, during a conference that offers an impressive lineup of headliners, keynote and session speakers.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin will share remarks during the VA1 opening general session and lunch on Nov. 13.
“Virginia sets the national standard for tourism, creating jobs and injecting critical dollars back into our communities,” Youngkin says. “Tourism is the cornerstone of future development, cultivating necessary job expansion and growth to help Virginia reach new heights. I look forward to the innovation that will come from this year’s VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit.”
The summit will attract about 450 attendees, plus exhibitors, with its “tremendous amount of educational content,” says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association, one of the organizers of the annual summit, which is hosted in a different location in the commonwealth each year. (Last year’s event was held in Norfolk.)
Among the major challenges in organizing an event of this scale, Terry says, is the number of hotel rooms needed to accommodate attendees, speakers and exhibitors. “We are limited in terms of places that we can do this conference, even in Virginia.” As of mid-September, rooms at the downtown Richmond Marriott near the convention center were sold out, but rooms were available at the nearby Hilton Richmond Downtown.
In 2022, visitors spent a record $30.3 billion in Virginia, a 20.3% increase from 2021, Youngkin announced in August.
“Visitor spending in Virginia exceeded $30 billion for the first time in our history, reaching $30.3 billion, and is now about 4% higher than it was prior to the pandemic,” notes Virginia Tourism Corp.’s vice president of research and strategy, Dan Roberts, who will speak during two summit sessions.
“To bring that into perspective, that means visitors are spending $83 million a day in the commonwealth. The entire tourism industry, from our hotels and restaurants to our local and regional destination marketing organizations and [convention and visitors bureaus] have all had a hand in driving that recovery,” Roberts adds.
Sarah Dandashy, who runs the website “Ask a Concierge,” is another headliner speaker at this year’s opening session and lunch. An author and TV personality, she has more than 18 years of experience in the luxury hotel industry.
“Despite economic and employment challenges, Americans are still making travel a priority. And it shows,” Dandashy says, but she notes that “the meeting planning industry is still rebounding — and it continues to look positive, but today’s group business demands have shifted.”
Ongoing trends that impact meeting planners, she notes, include “inflation; the decentralized workforce; the well-being of attendees; issues around diversity, equity and inclusion; technology; and sustainability.”
Business travel, though, is one segment that hasn’t fully recovered in Virginia, which impacts the hospitality industry in Northern Virginia, as well as bookings at large conference venues and work for meeting planners, Roberts notes.
“At the end of 2022, business travel spending throughout the commonwealth has only recovered to 77% of 2019 levels,” he says, while noting that events like the summit help people in the meetings and events industry learn from their colleagues and adapt.
“VA1 represents the incredible value of meeting face to face to share information, look ahead and build meaningful relationships throughout our industry, which are all reasons that Virginia and the travel industry nationwide can expect a full recovery in business travel,” Roberts says.
Two business colleagues sharing thoughts over breakfast and a pot of hot coffee — that was the setting for the light bulb moment that led to George Mason University launching the nation’s first academic center focused on government contracting.
“The idea for the center actually started in 2013 in a booth at the Silver Diner in Fairfax,” says John Hillen III, former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during President George W. Bush’s second term. Hillen, who is an adjunct professor at Mason’s School of Business and also had a long govcon career, was having breakfast with the school’s dean at the time, Sarah Nutter, who went on to serve as dean for the University of Oregon’s business school.
“We discussed how odd it was that there wasn’t a single business school in the area, or the country for that matter, that had academic expertise in the booming half-a-trillion-dollar-a-year industry that is centered right here,” Hillen says. “It made no sense, considering government contracting represents at least 40% of Northern Virginia’s GDP and employs about one out of every six white-collar professionals in the area.”
Based in Fairfax County, with campuses in Prince William and Arlington counties, George Mason is located amid the nation’s largest concentrated regional hub for government agencies and federal contractors, a $700 billion industry, notes Ajay Vinzé, dean of its School of Business.
Six years after Hillen and Nutter talked over coffee, the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting was founded in 2019, and in August, it moved into its new home at Buchanan Hall, on the university’s Fairfax campus. Five years in, the center is fast becoming a significant presence in the govcon world, providing opportunities for research, education and collaboration.
Virginia currently ranks as the top state in the nation for defense spending, with $62.7 billion spent in Virginia for fiscal 2022, according to the Department of Defense, but for years that growth went under the radar.
“It was like people had been Rip Van Winkled, where they were asleep between the 1980s and 2000s when Northern Virginia just exploded,” Hillen explains. “Major contractors began moving their headquarters here, bringing jobs that have been driving the Northern Virginia economy ever since. Government contracting is inextricably linked with the evolution of Northern Virginia.”
Northern Virginia is headquarters to four of the world’s six largest defense contractors: Boeing, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. In addition to those giants, Virginia-based federal sectors of tech corporations, from AT&T to Microsoft and Google, and a host of other contractors, from multibillion-dollar corporations to small businesses, operate across the region. With so much opportunity on its doorstep, George Mason leaders saw a need for a higher education center devoted to the industry.
“I felt strongly that government contracting, with its unique business, financial, strategic and marketing characteristics, was worthy of study within a business school, with professors doing research and teaching specialized classes,” Hillen says.
“That was the conversation that led to the center — a visionary dean wanting a mark of distinction for a business school that was rising in visibility and rankings, and a new professor who was asking why our business students were doing case studies on 3M when probably none of them would go to Minnesota to work on sticky notes after graduation. When you drive up and down the Dulles corridor, you see govcon company after govcon company. That is our local industry. This was Mason’s opportunity to specialize in an industry unique to us, one that we know employs a third of our students upon graduation.”
As Hillen helped get the process of launching the center underway, he came up with a tag line for it: “Building a Better Market for the Public Good.” He explains, “An industry that is studied becomes more transparent and is coached into better practices that better serve the taxpayers.”
George Mason senior Michelle Boone is slated to graduate in December with a minor in government contracting and hopes to find a job in the industry. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Filling a hole
Jerry McGinn, who was hired in 2018 as the center’s inaugural executive director, brought considerable experience to his role, having worked in the Department of Defense’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, and in the private sector at Deloitte Consulting and Northrop Grumman, among other govcon businesses.
“I was asked to stand up the center, which was an attractive opportunity, because there was a real hole in the marketplace,” he says.
At the start, it was just McGinn and the center’s associate director, Charlie Dolgas, although today the center has seven full-time staff members and four part-time senior researchers. So far that team has released more than 60 reports, white papers and commentaries and has received more than $4 million in sponsored research.
Also, government liaisons from the departments of Defense, State and Energy, as well as the General Services Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, regularly visit the center to share their knowledge and viewpoints at center meetings and events. The center’s advisory board brings executive expertise from 59 companies representing the full spectrum of the govcon community, including banks, consultants and accounting firms, as well as small businesses and the largest defense and aerospace companies.
Vinzé, who joined George Mason as its business school dean in 2022, is pleased with the center’s progress. “We have been able to clearly define government contracting as an important area of practical and academic interest. Our faculty are industry experts, and our students graduate ready to take on today’s and tomorrow’s emerging careers in this field,” he says.
“As a university, we are a neutral convening authority,” adds McGinn. “We have no agenda other than seeking outcomes that benefit both government and industry. We do that through three lines of effort: research, education and training, and collaboration.”
In November 2022, the center hit an important landmark, receiving a $7 million gift from Greg Baroni, founder and CEO of Attain Partners, Attain Capital Partners and Attain Sports and Entertainment, and his wife, Camille; the center is named for the couple. Maximus purchased Attain’s federal business in 2021.
A govcon veteran who served in the early 2000s as Unisys’ president of federal systems and global sector business, Baroni spoke at the August ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center’s new home in Buchanan Hall. His friend and colleague, Anne Altman, a Mason alumna, piqued his interest in supporting the center, he said.
“Government contracting extends far beyond contract vehicles and task orders. It embodies our duty to serve our nation and its citizens with integrity, efficiency and purpose,” Baroni said during the center’s opening. “Our aspiration for this center is to become a beacon of knowledge, fostering a community of professionals who grasp the intricate responsibilities that come with working in this realm.”
McGinn says the gift is shaping the center’s future. “It is helping to elevate us from being a respected voice and thought leader in the community to becoming the national hub for govcon issues,” he says. “Whenever something comes up on the national level, we want Mason to be the first place the national media reaches out to for comment.”
Inside influence
Beyond training students for govcon careers and achieving national prominence, the center also aims to influence industry discourse.
On Nov. 9, the center will host a government contracting conference with the theme “Resilience for the Future,” which McGinn acknowledges is “very timely. The COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine have shown us how important it is for both the government and commercial sectors to be able to bounce back from crises and to continue to deliver what is needed despite supply chain shocks and rapidly evolving threats.”
Additionally, the center has become a hub for industry research, winning more than $4 million in research grants from the DOD and the intelligence community, while also developing its own research topics.
“Our industry and government leaders want research that is digestible and impacts them directly, so we focus on commentary pieces, white papers and reports,” says McGinn.
McGinn is currently leading a team of six center researchers in a federally funded study for the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform, in an effort to bring the Pentagon’s 60-year-old national security system up to date.
“The commission is looking at ways to adapt the Pentagon’s Cold War-era PPBE process to meet the challenges of today’s national security environment, and we are providing research, analysis and expertise to support this work,” McGinn explains.
In June, McGinn and Michael Roche, a visiting research fellow who is a professor at the DOD’s Defense Acquisition University, co-authored a report on a “build allied” approach to increase industrial base capacity.
“This report examines how international industrial collaboration for military acquisition and production can be a mutually beneficial and cost-effective way to increase industrial capacity and resilience, a need starkly highlighted by the war in Ukraine,” McGinn says.
For students, the center offers an early and more direct career path to an industry that can sometimes be difficult to enter without military or accumulated on-the-job experience.
Noah Rivers, who is working toward an MBA at Mason, is employed at the center as a graduate research assistant. Besides helping with the PPBE research, Rivers is examining the government’s micro-purchase thresholds, which are set annually for small-scale procurement of supplies, construction and services.
“I have previous military experience, and almost every person I know who made their way into a government contracting career did it through military service or civilian military employment,” Rivers says. “For people who don’t have that background, the center creates an avenue for them to make their way into that world.”
Through Mason’s School of Business, more than 850 undergraduate and graduate students take courses related to government contracting.
Mason’s undergraduate minor in government contracting requires five courses, ranging from federal government marketing and supply chain management to government contracting and procurement, and not-for-profit accounting. Several graduate courses are offered through the MBA program, such as business issues in government contracting and focus on government contracting, and Mason offers two graduate certificate programs focused on government accounting for federal employment and contracting.
Meanwhile, a student ambassador program connects students with high-level industry leaders on the center’s advisory board via on-site company tours and visits, and job shadowing days, as well as industry seminars, roundtable events and workshops. The center also is a resource for companies to train and refresh their employees through an executive development program and two continuing education certificate programs.
George Mason senior Michelle Boone is slated to graduate from the business school in December with a degree in management and a minor in government contracting. As a student ambassador, she attended networking events that connected her to leaders in the industry. “I’ve learned a lot about the contract life cycle and the procurement process,” she says. “It’s been a great way to get to know the industry and explore career paths. I’ve met professionals in both the public and private sectors, and the opportunities are endless.”
Boone is unsure where she will land after graduation but is certain she wants to be part of the govcon community. “You don’t have to be a contracting officer to touch government contracts,” she says “Everyone in a company, from finance to HR, should be prepared to support a contract.”
“I’ve learned a lot about the contract life cycle and the procurement process,” she says. “It’s been a great way to get to know the industry and explore career paths. I’ve met professionals in both the public and private sectors, and the opportunities are endless.”
Attain Partners CEO Greg Baroni and his wife, Camille, made a $7 million gift to GMU’s government contracting center, which is now named for them. Photo courtesy George Mason University
Government connections
Guiding the center is its advisory board, which McGinn considers one of the center’s greatest assets.
“We really have become a respected, neutral convening authority for the industry,” he says.
Among the advisory board’s members are Michael Sanders, founder and CEO of Interactive Government Holdings, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, and John Tenaglia, principal director of defense pricing and contracting in the defense secretary’s office.
“The center benefits small businesses by providing the research, in-depth information and networking they need to strategically place and orient themselves within the market,” says Sanders. “From large companies like ManTech to small companies like mine, it’s valuable to hear input from different perspectives. Mason does a nice job of synthesizing all the information the board provides and then turning it into academic products that are usable within the industry.”
A connected board and faculty also help bring in speakers to the center, including September’s Government Contracting Small Business Summit, which included representatives from the federal government’s GSA, the DOD and the Small Business Administration, as well as contractors Synertex, UpSlope Advisors, Roccomar and ITCON, among others.
For Tenaglia, “what excites me most about the center is the collaboration, where various voices can come together to discuss the critical hot-button issues that we face. The center brings together academia, industry and government — the three legs of the stool, if you will — for positive engagement that results in providing the best goods and services for our warfighters. That’s really the heart of why we are here, to protect the nation. The people who put on the uniform are entitled to the best systems we can provide.”
At a glance
Founded Originally formed in 1949 as an extension of the University of Virginia, George Mason University became an independent institution in 1972.
Campus Mason’s footprint covers 848 acres in Northern Virginia. In addition to its Fairfax campus, this includes the Mason Square campus in Arlington. Located in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, Mason Square is home to the Antonin Scalia Law School, the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Business and the Schar School of Policy and Government. In 2025, George Mason will open its new Fuse building, a collaborative hub uniting scholars, students, researchers, policy and business developers. A Life Sciences and Engineering building is under construction at the Science and Technology campus in Manassas. The university also has the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation campus in Front Royal and a Mason Korea campus in Songdo, South Korea.
Enrollment 40,390 (fall 2023)
Student profile*
Female: 52%
Male: 48%
In-state: 77%
Minority: 64%
Academic programs Mason offers 211 degree programs, including 78 undergraduate degree programs, 94 master’s degree programs, 38 doctoral degree programs and its first professional program, a juris doctorate.
Butch Kendrick once worked in a factory making plywood suitcase components. Each time he ran a strip of plywood through a planer, he heard a loud, screeching whine. “I would hear that noise in my head until I went to sleep,” Kendrick says. “And I’ve never forgot that. Anyone who works in manufacturing, if I can do anything to improve their life and give them a better job, I want to do it.”
“Industry 4.0” refers to the fourth Industrial Revolution, marked by advanced manufacturing and other technological advances in automation, analytics, robotics and connectivity. The lab is intended to demonstrate Industry 4.0 concepts such as how robots and manufacturing machines can complete tasks without human involvement.
Robots carry material to machines that perform a task and then carry the part to the next stations in the manufacturing process, communicating wirelessly in a way that Kendrick calls “automagic.” The $1.6 million 2,500-square-foot lab should be fully functional in mid-December, Kendrick says, adding, however, “if we’re true to our guns, we’ll never be done.” As technology evolves, the lab must evolve, too, he says.
The lab will show manufacturers “how to automate their processes in a strategic way to ultimately optimize their production,” according to the IALR’s chief operating officer for manufacturing advancement, Tim Robertson.
Since the system gathers data as it operates, it will provide raw material for even more optimization — and help people interpret that data. “You have to have some intelligence built into the process in order to parse that down to get it into a more useable form,” Kendrick says, “so humans can understand what they’re looking at, basically.”
The lab will also prepare people to work with Industry 4.0 tech and concepts. “We know that one of the biggest challenges with rolling out these new processes and automation in Industry 4.0 is just having the people that have been exposed to and can contribute to that in a meaningful way,” Robertson says.
“One thing’s for sure,” Kendrick says. “It’s going to get rid of the monotonous type of work that people used to do.
PERSONAL MOTTO: Believing that a glass is half-full
MOST VALUED POSSESSION: My family
HOW I UNWIND FROM WORK: I rarely do. That’s a problem.
HOW I CHOSE MY CAREER PATH: I followed my passions — entrepreneurship and consumer electronics.
HOBBY/PASSION:Flying airplanes, operating my boat, repairing my classic cars, installing complex electronics in my homes and trying unsuccessfully to train our four dachshunds
SOMETHING I WOULD NEVER DO AGAIN: Take piano lessons. I have no musical ability.
MOST RECENT STREAMING SHOW I ENJOYED: “Yellowstone”
DID YOU KNOW? A 1965 graduate of the University of Virginia, Crutchfield is also an Air Force veteran who commanded a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile crew. At 15, he founded a small business installing hi-fi sound systems in homes around Charlottesville; in 1974 he was restoring a Porsche 356 in his garage when he ran into a problem figuring out which audio system to install in the sports car. That’s when he started his mail order catalog, which has morphed into an online retailer selling everything from televisions to drones.
Business-related travel and events are slowly making a comeback in the post-pandemic era.
In 2022, visitors to Virginia spent $30.3 billion in the commonwealth, exceeding 2019 spending by 4%. Of that spending, $4.8 billion was from business travelers, says Dan Roberts, vice president of research and strategy for Virginia Tourism Corp.
While none of the associations and experts Virginia Business contacted for this story had specific statewide economic impact figures associated with just conferences and conventions, they say that conference and convention activity is trending toward pre-pandemic levels and could eventually outpace it.
“We have seen a rebound in conferences and meetings at hotels,” says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association. “By far, corporate meetings spend the greatest amount per meeting, followed by professional organizations. We are hopeful that this rebound will continue as more and more companies bring their people back into the office.”
Vinod Agarwal, an economics professor and deputy director of Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis, says it is challenging to determine the true economic impact of business travel, because some conference and convention attendees are local residents or people from other parts of Virginia, as opposed to visitors from other states or countries.
“If only the local guys are coming for the meeting, the conference’s economic impact is different from [having outside attendees],” Agarwal says. “How many people actually come from out of town? Or out of the area? That number is relatively small. But if you want to get tourists or visitors from outside [who are] spending money, that is extra stimulus.”
Anecdotally, Dean Miller, the national sales manager of groups and meetings for Visit Fairfax, the county’s convention and visitors bureau, says he’s never been busier in the 18 years he’s been with the organization. In Fairfax County, “the demand is just off the charts right now” for conventions and conferences, he says.
Indeed, weeknight demand throughout 2023 has been a “source of strength for Virginia,” Roberts adds.
“Despite the steep hill that business travel still has to climb, we are optimistic on its recovery path,” he says. “Our highest hotel occupancies in recent months have been posted on weeknights in markets catering to business travelers, such as Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria, which we see as a normalization pattern as business travel recovers.”
Fairfax represents a more affordable option compared with Washington, D.C., so meetings and conventions for trade associations, medical societies, scientific specialty societies and “groups like that,” Miller says, are increasingly coming to Fairfax.
“I think part of that is that you have incredible demand, and as a result, the prices of hotels in downtown Washington — and even the [return on investment] — is through the roof,” he adds. “A lot of groups, I think, are looking at the rates down there and saying, ‘Holy cow, maybe we will go to Fairfax to save a few dollars.’”
Guest room rates are lower, taxes are lower and catering costs are lower in Fairfax than in D.C. — as well as overnight parking rates, Miller says. What’s also made Fairfax County an even more popular destination for conventions is the opening of the Metro stop at Washington Dulles International Airport. That station is set to hit its 1 millionth passenger this fall, according to Visit Fairfax.
When looking more closely at the economic impact of conferences, conventions and major meetings across the state, visitor spending can vary according to event type. In Fairfax County, spending associated with attendance at professional conventions, conferences and meetings tends to have the greatest impact.
According to a business travel profile produced for VTC by Longwoods International, the average business traveler to Virginia spent $886 in 2022, and spent just below four nights in a hotel. About 27% of all business travelers came here for conferences or conventions. Meanwhile, leisure travelers last year spent an average $782 per person, staying 3.3 nights in the state.
Dean Miller, national sales manager of groups and meetings for Visit Fairfax, says “demand is off the charts” for conventions and conferences. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Business vs. leisure
Of course, conventions are not all work. Sports and sci-fi fandom conventions like CSA Shows and GalaxyCon bring in visitors, as do more corporate events like the quantum computing-focused Quantum World Congress held Sept. 26-28 at Capital One Hall in Tysons.
“There’s some serious private money behind this,” Miller says of the Quantum World Congress, which drew about 1,000 people. “There’s some serious governmental money behind this. The people who understand this say that this technology today is about where the internet was in about 1988. This [conference] was a major coup for us to land. We would not have gotten in had we not had the hall, which is right next to a Metro stop … [with] Tysons’ hotel and restaurant infrastructure to support it.”
In Richmond, when comparing the economic impact of large events that draw crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 people, sports tournaments have the highest level of spending, says Jerrine Lee, vice president of sales for Richmond Region Tourism.
In the Richmond region, the USA Softball of Virginia Tournament and the Basketball Small College National Championships bring in many fans, with sports tourism overall accounting for 68% of the region’s group bookings, according to Richmond Region Tourism’s 2022 economic impact report.
Some sports fans also see family and friends or visit other attractions while attending tournaments. VTC reports that local spending for all tourism across the state was up by 21% last year.
When comparing a citywide convention, which requires simultaneous use of hotels, convention space and other venues, such as the Virginia Society of Association Executives’ Fall Conference and Expo, with a comic book, science fiction or film convention, citywide attendees will spend more on lodging — $400,000 versus $300,000. But fandom attendees spend more on food and beverages — $420,000 versus $270,000 — per event, Lee adds. That’s according to the Destinations International Event Impact calculator, which Richmond Region Tourism uses to “represent a conservative portrayal of the economic impact of events,” she says.
The 2022 economic impact report for RRT showed that meetings, conventions and tournaments brought in $113 million last year, with 309,383 estimated attendees.
Out in the Roanoke/New River Valley region, sports tourism generates great economic impact for Salem, says Carey Harveycutter, the city’s director of tourism. Overall, the economic impact each year for championship events in the Roanoke Valley runs between $1.05 million and $4 million, he adds. This includes the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) football championship hosted in November at the Salem Football Stadium, as well as the NCAA Division III men’s and women’s soccer championships. These tournaments can draw between 800 to 6,000 people, Harveycutter says.
“The impact [of those events] is on the whole Virginia’s Blue Ridge region,” he explains. Visitors will “come into town for two nights, stay in our hotels, in our restaurants and visit attractions.”
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