Baltimore-D.C.-Annapolis Triad
Fills In With Talent and Training

There can be no doubting the tremendous pull of both real estate and brainpower in the flare of territory running from the Washington, D.C. area outward to Annapolis, Baltimore and points east and north. At the northernmost boundary of Baltimore County, fleet management company PHH Arval decided in November 2002 to build a new 210,000-sq.-ft. (19,509-sq.-m.) headquarters for its 1,000 employees in the Highlands Office Park in Sparks. The 2004 move will be a slight nudge north for the company, previously headquartered in Hunt Valley, but not as dramatic a move as it could have been.
        "Though we considered other options, nothing could match northern Baltimore County, which has proven to be an excellent centralized location from which to attract a talented and committed work force from several Maryland counties and southern Pennsylvania," said George J. Kilroy, president and CEO of PHH, at the groundbreaking. "The new site will provide enhanced amenities for our people, the flexibility and space for more effective ways to serve our clients, and the opportunity to expand with future growth."
        Founded in 1946, PHH Arval, a Cendant Corp. subsidiary, provides integrated leasing, management and card payment solutions to thousands of corporate, government and service-related fleets, including nearly one-third of the Fortune 500 companies. In conjunction with Arval PHH, its joint venture partner in Europe, PHH Arval manages over 1.2 million vehicles worldwide, and recently won Call Center Magazine's Customer Care Leadership Award in the category "Best Call Center Team."
        Perhaps the most prominent corporate citizen in Baltimore is Northrop Grumman, which operates an Electronic Systems sector there. Robert T. Barnes, Manager of Lean Initiatives and Best Manufacturing Practices for that sector, is also the chairman of the Maryland Advisory Commission on Manufacturing Competitiveness (MACMC). He says that the regional meetings that produced the report brought several issues to the surface.
        "In every region, there was a significant understanding of the value of manufacturing to the community," he says. "Likewise there was a uniform opinion statewide that manufacturing really isn't what an awful lot of people think it is. A lot look at it as smokestacks and dirty hands, but in Maryland it's a high-tech business."
        Barnes sees areas both west and east of the state's urban center that might serve as homes to more industry, provided the proper technical and work-force development infrastructure is put in place. To that end, there is no better example than Northrop Grumman's relationships with area institutions of higher learning, embodied in its program with Anne Arundel Community College (AACC), funded by Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. It helped the school win the honor of 2002 Community College of the Year from the National Alliance of Business. Barnes says that the willingness of the school to tailor programs was paramount, especially given pressing deadlines brought on by new technology.
        "A lot of it had to do with significant leaps forward in information systems technology, where we needed to train or retrain in the range of 10,000 people, and needed a focal point for the implementation and training of that type of technology," he says. "They came through in very good form. We and others have been real benefactors in that they have transported that learning experience to other agencies in the state."
        "The project allows the college to gain valuable experience serving the education and training needs of a large, complex organization," says David Croghan, dean of work-force development and business services at AACC.

David Croghan

        Among the benefits to the college: the addition of more than 245 new courses, an increase in enrollment of over 45,000 registrations since the project began in 1997, expansion of campus and off-campus facilities and improvement of the school's administrative and registration processes. And the process drills down further into the state's educational infrastructure, by serving as the catalyst for the school's Teacher Technology Training (T3) project, which trains public school teachers in the effective use of technology in the classroom. Croghan sees the program as emblematic of the rising profile of community colleges, from "minor-league" educational players to leaders in higher education with a real-world perspective. As Croghan puts it, "many colleges deliver customized training, but are not often viewed as a strategic resource."
        "The community colleges are the graduate schools of the 21st century," he says. "With the proper local support, the work-force training that can be deployed by the nation's community college system is awesome."
        He says the new governor is "keen on the pivotal role community colleges play in the state's economic infrastructure," and looks to the new administration to continue growing such relationships, as the manufacturing survey suggests.