E-Newsletter

Fairfax County E-Bird for July 30, 2019

The Web expands: Amazon Web Services is expanding its presence in Fairfax County again, leasing an entire 270,000-square foot building on Sunrise Valley Drive in Herndon. The South Lake at Dulles Corner location is about two miles from One Dulles Tower, where AWS established its East Coast hub in 2017. That space is in a 400,000-square-foot building. Daniel J. Sernovitz of the Washington Business Journal broke the news of the new lease.

Safer skies: Aireon, which just last week announced an expansion of its Tysons headquarters, signed a deal with the Airports Authority of India to implement air traffic surveillance over the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. Business-Standard.com, which reported the deal, notes that India is the world’s third-largest aviation market.

Top schools in a top state: With eight of the top 10 public high schools in Virginia according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 rankings, Fairfax County Public Schools consistently rank among the best in the state. That becomes even more impressive given the fact that a new survey ranks Virginia’s public schools as the fourth-best in the nation. Check out WalletHub’s rankings, which compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia across 29 metric in a report summarized by financial writer Adam McCann.

Governor talks chops: In a guest column for the Washington Business Journal entitled “How Virginia got back its business chops,” Gov. Ralph Northam outlines several reasons why CNBC recently ranked the Commonwealth as the the best state in the nation to do business. “A key part of our strategy…is to invest in workforce education and training. Across industries, Virginia’s workforce is one of the most productive and educated in the country,” said Northam, who also cited investment in transportation projects and systems such as Metro.

Double deal: Looking to broaden its customer base and strengthen its technology platform, KLDiscovery, a Tysons-based provider of electronic discovery and data recovery services to large corporations and law firms, acquired New York-based Strategic Legal Solutions and Richmond-based Compiled. The deals come two months after KLDiscovery went public and announced its pending merger with Pivotal Acquisition Corp. According to Katishi Maake of the Washington Business Journal, SLS brings eDiscovery and managed document review services, while Compiled offers a subscription-based platform to help users handle discovery documents in their eDiscovery workflow.

Arrest made: The FBI on Monday arrested a Seattle-area woman on a charge of computer fraud and abuse in connection with an announcement by Tysons-based bank Capital One that about 106 million people who applied for credit cards and credit card products had personal information accessed. No credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised, the bank said, and more than 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised. The bank said it will make free credit-monitoring available to all affected people, noted Andy Medici of the Washington Business Journal.

Info to bank on: Virginia Business looks at the impending BB&T/SunTrust merger and the impact it could have on the local banking community. Carol Hazard writes that newly created Truist Financial will hold 25 percent of all banking deposits in Virginia and be the sixth-largest U.S. bank. But with half of the 282 overlapping BB&T and SunTrust branches in Virginia (those within two miles of each other) expected to close, the report sees opportunities for competing local banks to add customers, expand branches and hire talented employees.

Under the Tysons big top: Cirque du Soleil is back in Tysons with “VOLTA,” a sports-themed show that will run through September 29. The show tent has been set up between Tysons Galleria and the Tysons Corner Metro station. Catherine Douglas Moran handled the journalistic acrobatics for the Tysons Reporter  and WTOP has photos from Thursday’s opening performance.

Notable contract wins by firms in Fairfax County

  • Solis Applied Science received a potential five-year, $77.4 million Army contract to provide remote sensing and image science support to the National Ground Intelligence Center. GovConWire
  • Under a five-year, $600 million agreement, Lockheed Martin will supply Northrop Grumman 24 radar units for a Navy program. ExecutiveBiz
  • Northrop Grumman received a potential $167.3 million contract to  produce 263 anti-radiation guided missiles for the Navy.  GovConWire
  • BAE Systems has been selected by General Dynamics to manufacture 28 payload tubes to create additional payload space and increase firepower potential for the Navy’s Virginia-class submarines. ExecutiveBiz
  • Dewberry secured a potential three-year task order to help FEMA manage housing repair and construction projects in the Northern Mariana Islands. ExecutiveBiz

Upcoming business events

  •  September 10: Entrepreneurship 101: Starting a Business in Fairfax County. This FCEDA workshop is for those contemplating doing business in the county. The series, which covers a full range of basics, is held in partnership with the Community Business Partnership, the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity, and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Registration is required. Click here.