With over 35 years of industry and consulting experience, Feemster specializes in supply chain and distribution network strategy, operations management in manufacturing and distribution environment, supply chain cost improvement, distribution center master planning, and economic development business planning.  Before joining FQL Logistics, Feemster was a senior manager in three manufacturing companies, a consultant, an executive in two third-party logistics providers, and a practice group leader in two real estate companies.

For a copy of Feemster’s presentation, please click here to download the PDF. If you would like to link to or use any portion of this presentation, please source “Tim Feemster, Managing Principal, Foremost Quality Logistics.”

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An architectural rendering of an aerial view of the future UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay.

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

Rock Health, a digital health accelerator, will base its global headquarters in Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.’s Mission Bay cluster in San Francisco, which is adjacent to UC San Francisco’s (UCSF) Mission Bay campus. With the announcement, the Mission Bay area will become an even stronger magnet for commercial entities looking to access its unparalleled scientific talent and breakthrough innovations.

“Rock Health is committed to engaging with the brightest minds in healthcare to further innovation. Our choice of Mission Bay and new partnership with Alexandria reaffirms this commitment, and will enable us to support not just our portfolio companies but also the broader startup ecosystem,” said Rock Health Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Halle Tecco. “This move will enhance our ability to collaborate with groundbreaking researchers, clinicians and corporate partners in our industry.”

“Rock Health’s move to Mission Bay comes at a critical time as San Francisco implements national healthcare reform and is striving to give residents more choices for healthier lifestyles,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. “We are partnering with innovative companies such as Rock Health to disrupt the way we do business and, at the same time, improve the healthcare industry. Rock Health’s new proximity to UCSF doctors, entrepreneurs and scientists at our small startups, pharmaceutical companies, and investors will accelerate advances in the life science, healthcare and technology industries here in San Francisco.”

Founded in 2010, Rock Health supports digital health entrepreneurs through a startup accelerator, public events and open-source research. To date, 49 startups have participated in Rock Health’s accelerator program.

“One of the lessons of modern medicine is that it cannot be done in a vacuum—it requires experts from science, technology and many health-related fields to come together to create more predictive, preventive and precise care for every patient, everywhere,” said UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH. “In the last decade, Mission Bay has created an ecosystem that brings all of these elements together, with a spirit of innovation that encourages entrepreneurs to build new companies for the future. That’s the perfect atmosphere for entrepreneurs at Rock Health, and makes Rock Health a logical partner in that effort.”

“For years, Mission Bay has been at the forefront of life science innovation,” said Joel S. Marcus, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. “Now, with Rock Health’s announcement that it will establish its global headquarters in Mission Bay, this world-class ecosystem has emerged at the leading edge of the digital health revolution, as well.”

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Posted by Heidi Schwartz

The impact of a 30 percent improvement in U.S. building efficiency by 2030 is the subject of the new report, Unlocking American Efficiency: The Economic and Commercial Power of Investing in Energy Efficient Buildings. The 32-page report was prepared on behalf of United Technologies Corporation by the Rhodium Group (RHG), which combines policy experience, quantitative economic tools and on-the-ground research to analyze global trends.

According to the findings, improving energy efficiency in buildings by 30 percent would create a $275 billion market for advanced technology, engineering and design services, and construction activity in the U.S. alone—that’s larger than the total U.S. advertising market. The energy savings would generate $34 billion per year for American businesses, net of investment expenses, that could either be used to hire more employees or invest in R&D or expanded production. And federal, state and local governments in budget-constrained times would save more than $8 billion annually, equivalent to funding the National Science Foundation or nearly all of the annual budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Energy efficiency has played an important role in American productivity and environmental protection. Now building efficiency is a pivotal investment strategy to free an estimated $65 billion in annual cash flow for households, businesses and governments across the country,” said John Mandyck, chief sustainability officer, UTC Climate, Controls & Security. ”Improving the energy efficiency of buildings increases the productivity of existing assets, guards against future energy price hikes and offers some of the most attractive rates of return available today. The first step in improving energy efficiency in buildings is letting building owners, tenants and investors know the scale of the opportunity at hand.”

Smart policy can serve as a catalyst for the investment in building efficiency solutions and includes such things as building labels and codes, effective standards, efficiency finance, portfolio standards and regulatory reform.

To download the report, click this link.

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Back in 2008, West Main Street in Lexington—new home to the Imperium Health Management HQ—was named one of America’s Top 10 Great Streets by the American Planning Association.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has announced that Imperium Health Management is establishing a headquarters operation in Louisville, creating 40 new, full-time jobs and investing more than $1.3 million in the project.

“Imperium Health Management is a new company with a strong vision for the future, and that is exactly what we want to see here in Kentucky,” said Gov. Beshear. “Headquarters are always exciting, because they bring top quality leaders and high-paying jobs. In this case, we have 40 of those jobs on the way, and that’s a victory for Louisville and the Commonwealth.”

Imperium Health Management provides focused solutions to enable physician-led accountable care delivery, including organization, implementation, care coordination and patient support to optimize medical cost and outcomes. Founded in 2010, the company currently has 11 employees. The new headquarters will be established in a building on West Main Street in Louisville.

“Imperium has operations in Phoenix, Jacksonville, Chicago and two in Kentucky,” said Gary Albers, co-founder and COO. “Louisville provides us with a central location and easy access to the airport with ample flight options. The Commonwealth of Kentucky and the city of Louisville are a perfect choice for a health care start up. Louisville provides a deep legacy in health care, being here provides us with access to an employee base of health care thought leaders. With innovation happening in Louisville, this gives us exposure to companies and professionals alike, helping Imperium set the trend in the next wave of health care transformation: the Accountable Care Organization.”

To encourage the investment and job creation in Louisville, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority preliminarily approved the company for tax incentives up to $500,000 through the Kentucky Business Investment program. The performance-based incentive allows a company to keep a portion of its investment over the term of the agreement through corporate income tax credits and wage assessments by meeting job and investment targets.

“I am very pleased that Imperium Health Management is making this investment in our community by establishing a headquarters in Louisville and creating new jobs,” said Sen. Gerald A. Neal, of Louisville. “Louisville will reap the rewards of economic growth and these additional job opportunities. I applaud Gov. Beshear for taking the lead to support this industry, their employees and their families.”

“Louisville has built a strong and diverse reputation in the health care industry, and companies like Imperium Health Management will ensure that this stays that way in the years to come,” said Rep. Darryl Owens, of Louisville. “I’m definitely pleased it is locating its headquarters in our community, and that our local and state officials could work together to help make this possible.”

“These high-paying jobs are good for our economy, and they help further validate the city’s strength in the health care sector,” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said. “Imperium could have left for another city, but our pool of talented health care workers and these tax incentives helped ensure the company stays in Louisville—and grows here.”

“It’s exciting to know that Louisville’s skilled and knowledgeable health care talent made a difference in bringing and keeping one of the country’s first fully comprehensive health care enablement companies here,” said GLI president and CEO Craig Richard. “It speaks to our burgeoning position in the health care industry and our ability to deliver much needed and experienced talent.”

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The IPL building at Monument Circle. (Photo: Jonathan Goforth.)

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

AES Corporation, the parent company of Indianapolis Power & Light Company (IPL), plans to locate its U.S. business unit headquarters in Indianapolis, IN, creating up to 100 high wage jobs by the end of 2014. The company, one of the world’s largest independent power producers, will invest approximately $1.2 million to align its U.S. operations support in Indianapolis. The 21 AES businesses across the country will transition to operate as one strategic business unit, housed at IPL’s existing headquarters at the Electric Building on Monument Circle.

“We are proud that a global company like AES has chosen Indiana as its hub for all U.S. operations,” said Pence. “Indiana’s unmatched business climate, central location and strong workforce continue to set us apart and make our state the best place for companies to expand and more effectively run their business.”

“This decision demonstrates AES’ commitment to Indiana,” said Ken Zagzebski, the new president of AES’ U.S. strategic business unit and chief executive officer of IPL. “AES decided to expand here primarily due to the excellent business and regulatory climate we have in the state.”

Founded in 1981, AES provides sustainable energy to 23 countries through a diverse portfolio of distribution and generation businesses. The Fortune 200 global power company has 2,400 MW of power plants under development in eight countries.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered AES Corporation up to $2,750,000 in conditional tax credits and up to $87,500 in training grants based on the company’s job creation plans. The city of Indianapolis supports the project at the request of Develop Indy, a business unit of the Indy Chamber.

“IPL has always been a valued partner in our community and we welcome its parent company’s expanded presence in Indianapolis,” said Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard. “Our community will benefit from AES’ commitment to bring high-wage job opportunities to our skilled workforce.”

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The message of Burghard’s presentation was “It’s NOT About Jobs. It’s About Enabling Residents To Better Achieve The American Dream.” Burghard argues that the ability to realize the American Dream is different depending on where you live. The ideal location is one that delivers the assets a company requires AND enables employees to achieve the American Dream. Locations where the American Dream is perceived to be more achievable have a competitive advantage in capital attraction that can be leveraged in their branding efforts.

Click here for a copy of the presentation.

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Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were launched in 2003. They were originally designated MER-1 and MER-2 by NASA, but while the rovers were being constructed at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA, the space agency decided to hold a student essay competition to rename them. Sofi Collis, a nine-year-old who came to America as an orphan from Russia, sent in the winning entry from her third-grade class in Arizona.

“I used to live in an orphanage,” Sofi wrote. “It was dark and cold and lonely. At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better. I dreamed I could fly there. In America, I can make all my dreams come true. Thank you for the ‘Spirit” and the ‘Opportunity.”

Spirit and Opportunity each were equipped with six motorized wheels and solar arrays that can generate about 140 watts for up to four hours per Sol [a Sol is about an hour longer than a day on Earth]. Rechargeable lithium ion batteries store energy for use at night. The rovers were designed to have a maximum speed of up to 2 inches/second and to operate safely at tilts up to 30 degrees.

Onboard computers on the rovers use a 20 MHz CPU that has 128 MB of memory. Gold film and a layer of silica insulates the unit, enabling it to operate at temperatures ranging from 40 below zero to 104 degrees F. Metal from the World Trade Center was used to create shields that protect cables on the rovers’ drilling mechanisms.

In 2007, three years after beginning their expedition on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity had to shut down for several months as raging dust storms limited solar power to a level that nearly caused a permanent failure of both rovers. In 2009, Spirit’s exploration came to an end when it got stuck in deep sand. But Opportunity is still roaming around and investigating the surface of the Red Planet more than 3,100 Sols after it was expected to shut down.

A few weeks ago, Opportunity discovered a three-foot-long rock that looked interesting to NASA’s scientists. Opportunity conducted tests on the rock using its onboard Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and discovered minerals usually found in clay. Opportunity also determined that the water that formed the clay had a low enough acidity to support the creation of life.

That’s right, we’re talking about Martians.

We bring this up because — on the same Sol we read about Opportunity’s discovery of the near-certainty that life forms existed on another planet — we also were digesting the American Society of Civil Engineers’ annual report card on America’s infrastructure. (We dug up the ASCE report as part of our research for Business Facilities’ annual state ranking for Best Infrastructure).

We’ll cut to the chase here:  America’s infrastructure has received a grade of D+. To keep it simple for a nation that has let the best infrastructure in the world crumble in less than three decades, ASCE is using the familiar elementary school five-grade system. As anyone who has wrestled with junior high school algebra knows, a D+ means you didn’t fail because the teacher took pity on you.

ASCE also grades each state on its infrastructure. The highest grade that any state received was a C+. Most of the states received a D and there were a few awarded a D-, which we’ll assume was the association’s way of flunking a state without completely humiliating it.

ASCE gives a breakdown of its criteria for each state’s infrastructure grade, including the number of bridges that are about to collapse, the number of dams that have not been certified and the number of roads that have potholes the size of Jupiter, among other concerns. Reading these reports for state after state is like reading about the damage wrought by aerial bombardment in WWII. Almost every state, it seems, has hundreds of dilapidated bridges that aren’t being fixed while millions of Americans drive over these aging structures every day.

ASCE estimates the U.S. needs to spend at least $3.6 trillion to repair and modernize its infrastructure by 2020 to remain competitive as a modern industrial power.

Which brings us back to the surface of Mars, which has no infrastructure. Whatever life forms it once hosted were not around long enough to evolve into creatures with the intelligence to cover dirt with asphalt, call these structures highways and build vehicles powered by hemi engines to drive over them.

Opportunity wasn’t equipped with the kind of artificial intelligence now coming out of the labs, neural networks that can give machines an intuitive processing capability a step closer to human reasoning, attached to gigabytes of memory.

If Opportunity had these programs, he might turn his man-made eyes back to the place he came from and wonder how it came to be that the nation that built him couldn’t summon the spirit and opportunity to rebuild itself. He might wonder how such a smart people got so dumb so fast.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

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The Continuous Cold Mill tower at ALCOA’s North Plant in Alcoa, Tennessee, located in the Southeastern United States. The tower, easily visible from US-129 and McGhee-Tyson Airport, is one of the first sites to greet travelers entering Blount County. The tower was built in 1987. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Economic and Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty, along with Alcoa officials, have announced the company will expand its rolling mill in Alcoa, TN, to meet the growing demand for light, durable and recyclable aluminum sheet for automotive production. The expansion at Alcoa’s facility represents a $275 million investment over the next three years and will add 200 permanent full-time jobs upon completion, as well as 400 jobs during the construction phase.

“I want to thank Alcoa for its new investment in East Tennessee and for 100 years of incredible service in Blount County,” Haslam said. “Our Jobs4TN strategy identifies key industry clusters where Tennessee holds a unique competitive advantage, and we are grateful Alcoa is expanding its presence and joining in our state’s continued growth in the automotive sector.”

“Innovation drives economic development, and Alcoa’s adaptability and growth over the past 100 years in our state is an ideal example of what can be achieved,” Hagerty said.  “I am pleased Alcoa recognizes Tennessee’s business-friendly climate, quality workforce and unique strengths within the global automotive industry.”

“Our Tennessee expansion is a great example of how Alcoa’s edge in technology and innovation is capturing growth opportunities in our value-added mid- and downstream businesses,” Alcoa Chairman and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said. “More and more auto producers are turning to aluminum to increase the fuel efficiency and quality of their vehicles—we anticipate a quadrupling of auto sheet volume by 2015 and a tenfold increase by 2025.

The project will convert some of the plant’s can sheet capacity to high-strength automotive aluminum capacity as well as install incremental automotive capacity. The Blount County expansion is scheduled to be completed by mid-2015. When completed, the plant will be a key supplier both to the packaging and automotive markets. Much of the volume for the automotive expansion is already secured under long-term supply agreements.

“We’re excited to be part of Alcoa’s continued growth in Blount County,” Blount Partnership President/CEO Bryan Daniels said. “It means a lot to this community that they stayed true to their roots.”

“We are extremely proud of Alcoa and all that it does for this community,” Alcoa Mayor Don Mull said. “This expansion truly means a lot by showing Alcoa’s commitment to continue to build upon itself and grow its business here.”

“This is just another in a line of great business successes this county has experienced in the last 18 months,” Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell said. “The major addition in jobs and capital investment really shows Alcoa’s confidence in the workforce of this area. We appreciate their commitment to expanding locally.”

“A huge thanks goes out to Alcoa for seeing the benefit of staying local and adding to the continued economic development Blount County enjoys,” Maryville Mayor Tom Taylor said.

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Photo: Schaefer, Inc.

The Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine is expanding its research and development operations by acquiring laboratory and office space in the university’s Forensic Science Center Annex from the Huntington Area Development Council.

The announcement by Dr. Joseph I. Shapiro, dean of the School of Medicine, reflects an agreement among the Huntington Area Development Council, the Marshall University Research Corporation and the medical school that will give the school the space it needs to grow its biomedical research program.

“I am thrilled we will soon expand our biomedical research operations into space at the Forensic Science Center Annex,” Shapiro said. “Through our partnership with HADCO and the Marshall University Research Corporation, the School of Medicine will now be able to move forward with research projects guided by our new vice dean for research, Dr. Nader Abraham.  Moreover, I’m certain expansion of our research capabilities will eventually lead to additional opportunities and ultimately to better health care for our patients.”

The School of Medicine’s new space is in an area of the annex designated for research and biotechnology startup companies when the facility was built. HADCO, using $1 million in federal funding, partnered with Marshall University to build the annex with a goal of creating an environment for “new economy” jobs. Through the agreement announced today, the School of Medicine will sublease from HADCO 2,100 square feet for its new laboratories and offices.

Researchers in the new labs will be investigating the causes of kidney disease and hypertension as well as conducting clinical trials on medications to improve heart function and decrease body weight.

Forensic Science Annex

“This is exactly what HADCO envisioned several years ago,” said Stephen J. Golder, chairman of HADCO’s executive committee.  “HADCO will continue to encourage research throughout Marshall University and the School of Medicine that can result in the creation of ‘new economy’ jobs in our region.”

Golder went on to say the partnership is a great example of how public and private entities can work to foster economic development in the region.

Dr. John M. Maher, Marshall’s vice president for research, added, “We are excited by this rapid response to demand for new research space at the School of Medicine to accommodate new grant-funded researchers. With our partner HADCO, we look forward to the innovation and technology-based economic development that will follow this new research activity. This is another significant step in making Huntington a leading regional center for translational research.”

The research space in Huntington, WV, is expected to be ready for occupancy this fall.

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The Dodge Momentum Index rose 3.6% in May from the previous month, according to McGraw Hill Construction, a division of McGraw Hill Financial. The Momentum Index has risen for six consecutive months, the longest period of increases since 2006. The index now rests at 117.4 and is up 3.6% since May of 2012. The uncertainty surrounding new development appears, for now, to have dissipated, and the climate for nonresidential building projects is gaining strength as the planning pipeline grows more active.

In contrast to prior months, the May advance for the Momentum Index was largely the result of a strong upturn by its institutional segment. New plans for institutional buildings rose 10.2% in May, bolstered by plans for several college and hospital-related projects.

Among the larger healthcare developments to enter planning in May were the $135 million University Hospital Patient Tower in West Chester, OH and the $120 million INOVA Comprehensive Cancer and Research Institute in Fairfax, VA.

The largest institutional project overall to enter the planning phase in May was a $450 million/300,000 square foot casino project in Milford, MA. Advancement for this project is still dependent on voter approval, however.

Meanwhile, the commercial segment took a pause in May, receding 1.6% from April. A dip in office-related planning projects weighed on the commercial component of the index, while retail development continued to gain strength.

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