Washington Post
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
By Renae Merle
Excerpt:
Herndon-based Triple Canopy Inc., which has about 1,000 employees in Iraq and won part of a State Department contract last year to guard high-risk embassies, has branched out from government work and begun advising commercial clients about potential threats to their office buildings.
Triple Canopy, formed in 2003 by military veterans, has made several changes in recent months. It named a new president, Roger A. Young, a former senior executive at Maximus Inc., and established a strategic advisory board, which includes Catherine Yoran, a former assistant general counsel at the CIA. It also unveiled a new strategic plan, which includes expanding its training facility in West Virginia, traditionally used for its own employees.
There has been increasing demand for special training for local law enforcement, said Lee Van Arsdale, chief executive of Triple Canopy. "The first responder has to think in such broader terms now -- you're talking about response to a chemical attack, high explosives, the prevention-and-detection aspect," he said. The firm also acquired a training company in Texas for potential clients in the Midwest and is looking for a facility on the West Coast.
Triple Canopy has also begun offering vulnerability assessments to commercial companies, he said. And by 2008, the company forecasts, 30 percent of its revenue will be from commercial business, Van Arsdale added, compared with less than 5 percent now.
"We have been wildly successful with what we have done in Iraq, but that is a completely dynamic environment, and we're not going to pin our company's future on always having a lot of work in Iraq," he said. "It would be foolish of us to be a one-dimension company."