BOSSIER CITY, La. (AP) - A state-of- the-art building equipped with bean bag chairs, mobile and collaborative workspaces and a cafe/town hall designed to appeal to the millennial workforce soon will open its doors in Bossier City.
After two years of construction, a ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held Nov. 15 to celebrate the completion of the CSRA Integrated Technology Center.
CSRA is a global company that brings next-generation technology services to the federal government. Bossier City was selected out of 134 potential cities to be the site of the ITC.
Since 2014, CSRA employees, which grew from one person to about 400 today, have been housed in the nearby Cyber Innovation Center. But with the opening of the ITC in the National Cyber Research Park, a vision that has been in the works since that time will finally come to fruition.
“It’s very different for Bossier City,” said ITC Director of Operations Ashley Rockett.
In designing the $39 million, 96,000 square-foot building, the goal of CSRA and architect Mike McSwain was to promote a theme of mobility, collaboration and movement, Rockett said.
By June 2018, the ITC is expected to have created at least 800 jobs. The company hopes the facility’s innovative design will attract potential employees, particularly those of the younger generation.
“A large portion of those (employees) are going to be, we hope, from the millennial workforce,” Rockett said. “A lot of the mobile workspace was really catering to them.”
Most of the furniture in the four-story building has wheels so that employees can move around and work in different groups and atmospheres.
“Somebody might have a desk on the second floor, but they might one day want to break out and have a team come down (to the café area) and work, because the whole building is Wi-Fi enabled,” Rockett said. “So we really have the ability to work anywhere in the entire building.”
The building’s workspaces and training rooms were largely designed to include white boards for collaboration and monitors for conferencing. The facility also has spaces that can be used as classrooms. Another attractive perk for employees will be the presence of Rhino Coffee and Jason Brady Restaurant Group in the building’s café/town hall area.
McSwain also attempted to incorporate Louisiana elements in the design such as using reclaimed Cypress wood.
While CSRA aims to create 800 jobs, the company is not limiting itself to that number, Rockett said.
“Eight hundred is the goal and commitment to the city and the state, but we will grow as fast and as much as we can,” she said. “If we hit 800, we’re not going to stop.”
CSRA is also opening an engagement contact center on Benton Road, and the company may end up bringing 1,100 jobs to Bossier by the time June 2018 rolls around. CSRA just recently obtained a $166 million contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency that will soon bring 35-40 jobs to the ITC.
While CSRA is seeking applicants with a top secret clearance for those jobs, Rockett said that, in general, CSRA looks for a variety of employees.
“Anyone right now that has a background in technology we would be interested in talking to, from college graduate to senior experience,” she said.
Many jobs require certain types of security clearances because of the company’s governmental clients.
“We have the ability once we find candidates to put them through the clearance processes if it’s required by our customer,” Rockett said. “Every entity that we work with is different.”
As the ribbon-cutting ceremony nears, Rockett praised Bossier City and Bossier Parish for working with CSRA to bring the technology center to life.
“What’s so great to me is that Bossier listens to the demand, and they make the changes,” Rockett said. “When we were talking about the millennial workforce, one of the things we indicated to them early on was that there’s not a lot of fun millennial spaces. They really are listening and catering to the types of things that we need. They’re a tremendous, tremendous partner.”
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Information from: The Times, https://www.shreveporttimes.com
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