Parsons Corporation

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Group.png Parsons Corporation  
(CorporationSourcewatch WebsiteRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
Parsons Corporation.png
Formation1944
FounderRalph M. Parsons
HeadquartersVirginia
Staff16,000
Membership• Carey Smith
• Christian Alexander
• Paul Decker
• Doug Dreyer
• Mark Fialkowski
• Michael Kolloway
• Ricardo Lorenzo
• Thomas Topolski
• Wendy Van Wickle
• Jason Yaley
• Charles L. Harrington
• Mark K. Holdsworth
• Steven F. Leer
• Letitia A. Long
• Darren W. McDew
• James F. McGovern
• Harry T. McMahon
• Christian Mitchell
• Carey A. Smith
• Suzanne M. Vautrinot
• David C. Wajsgras
Military-industrial complex construction company. Had people at 2020 censorship conference.

Parsons Corporation (Parsons) is an American technology-focused defense, intelligence, security, and infrastructure engineering company.[1][2]

Having traditionally done business by ensuring itself contracts for military construction projects, it had a representative at the October 2020 panel discussion "Call to Action: CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation".

History

Parsons was founded by Ralph M. Parsons in 1944.[2] The company delivered electronics, instrumentation, ground checkout systems design, and engineering for aircraft, missiles and rockets during the Cold War.[3] In 1974, Parsons opened the first part of its Pasadena headquarters in Pasadena.[4]

Parsons has more than 16,000 employees across 24 countries.

Notable Parsons projects include:

Profiteering in Iraq

On January 16, 2004, Parsons[7] that it had been awarded "a contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for future work restoring the Iraq oil infrastructure to pre-war production levels. The contract was awarded to Parsons Iraqi Joint Venture, which includes Parsons E&C Corporation, based in Houston, Texas, and Parsons Corporation, based in Pasadena, California. The Worley Group of Australia is a teamed subcontractor. The task order contract covers a full range of services to restore the oil production in the northern portion of Iraq with a maximum value of $800 million."[8]

On April 3, 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers informed that Parsons' "reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed," Ellen Knickmeyer [9] reported in the Washington Post.[10].

"The contract, [which was] awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis," Knickmeyer wrote. "Parsons, according to the Corps, will walk away from more than 120 clinics that on average are two-thirds finished. Auditors say the project serves as a warning for other U.S. reconstruction efforts due to be completed this year."

Parsons was awarded a contract for a $243-million project to build 150 health care centers in Iraq in March 2004. By March 2006, $186 million had been spent, with six centers complete and accepted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE);, 135 centers only partly complete; and one was reassigned to another contractor. USACE progressively terminated the contract from September 2005 to March 2006, eventually requiring Parsons to complete a total of 20 centers, with the others to be completed by other contractors. The estimated cost for the completion of the other 121 centers was $36 million.[11]

The Army Corps of Engineers announced June 19, 2006, "that it had canceled a $99.1 million contract with Parsons, one of the largest companies working in Iraq, to build a prison north of Baghdad after the firm fell more than two years behind schedule, threatened to go millions of dollars over budget and essentially abandoned the construction site," James Glanz,[12] reported June 20, 2006, in the New York Times.

The newspaper added : "The move is another harsh rebuke for Parsons, only weeks after the corps canceled more than $300 million of the company's contracts to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq. A federal oversight office had found that some of the clinics were little more than empty shells and that only 20 of 150 called for in the contract would be completed without new financing."

Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy Jr., commander of the corps' Gulf Region Division, said that the "loss of business for Parsons in Iraq may not be over [as] a broad review of Parsons' work in Iraq had turned up problems in sector after sector. According to news releases on the Parsons Web site, the company has received contracts worth as much as $4 billion in Iraq ... for building and refurbishing scores of police stations, border forts, fire stations, courthouses, prisons and Iraqi government buildings. 'We found overruns in almost every case,' General McCoy said.

"Corps officials also said that they had asked the company to explain delays and overruns on another prison project, south of Nasiriya, for which it has an $82.7 million contract," Glanz wrote.

A "pair of scathing reports" on "the $243 million program to build 150 clinics" showed that Parsons "would complete only 20 unless new financing were found. ... In some cases, the reports found, the clinics were little more than empty shells of uneven bricks and concrete that were already crumbling into dust. But those reports focused much of their criticism on what they called the failure of the corps to exercise proper oversight of the work.

"Shortly after those reports were issued, General McCoy canceled the clinics contract, and shortly thereafter voided a $70 million Parsons project to refurbish 20 hospitals in Iraq." McCoy said that "he had found $62 million in his budget to finish the remaining clinics by letting construction contracts directly to Iraqi companies," Glanz wrote.

CBOSS Positive train control system

Parsons was contracted in 2011 to implement a custom positive train control system for Caltrain, to be completed before the December 2015 federal PTC deadline mandated by the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.[13] The project, called the Communications Based Overlay Signal System (CBOSS), failed to meet its 2015 delivery date and Caltrain terminated the contract as a result of "non-performance in 2017 after many months of delay and repeated failure by the contractor to correct performance issues."[13][14] After the cancellation of the Parsons contract, Caltrain approved a new contract for an off-the-shelf PTC system from Wabtec.[13][15]

Corporate info

In late February 2019, Parsons announced the move of its headquarters from Pasadena, California to Centreville, Virginia.[16]

On 8 May 2019, Parsons executed an Initial Public Offering of approximately $500M on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PSN.[17]

In December 2019, it was announced that Parsons and Leidos Holdings Inc. had earned spots on a $4 billion contract to support the cleanup of a former nuclear weapons site in southern Washington state.[18]

Ralph M. Parsons Foundation

In 1961, Parsons founded the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. The foundation became entirely independent from the company in 1974.[19][20]


 

Event Participated in

EventStartEndDescription
Call to Action: CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation19 October 202019 October 2020Strategic public-private master plan for medical censorship and vaccine persuasion.
Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.


References

  1. https://www.parsons.com/about/faq/
  2. a b https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1126/184.html#4abdd4d0546a
  3. Thumbs up for performance. // Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 14, 1957, v. 67, no. 15, p. 84.
  4. https://books.google.com/books?id=3HLb4SY0uyEC&q=ralph+m+parsons+opens+pasadena+facility&pg=PA96
  5. Howard, William E. Billions for ICBM Launching Facilities // Missiles and Rockets, May 11, 1959, v. 5, no. 19, p.13-14.
  6. Packard Reminds Industry of Its Duty — Defense. // Missiles and Rockets, September 5, 1960, v. 7, no. 10, p. 17.
  7. http://www.parsonsiraq.com/english/pressroom_rio.asp announced
  8. http://www.parsonsiraq.com/english/rio.asp "Restore Iraq Oil (RIO) North Project"
  9. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/02/AR2006040201209.html
  10. http://www.parsonsiraq.com/english/buildings.asp
  11. https://web.archive.org/web/20080829015422/http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070215111017-80058.pdf
  12. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13757
  13. a b c https://www.railwayage.com/cs/caltrain-considers-new-wabtec-contract-ptc/
  14. http://www.caltrain.com/AssetFactory.aspx?did=10942
  15. http://www.caltrain.com/about/MediaRelations/news/Caltrain_Receives__18_7_Million_Grant_for_Positive_Train_Control_Project.html
  16. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-parsons-moving-headquarters-20190228-story.html
  17. https://www.enr.com/articles/46824-in-may-8-stock-offering-parsons-corp-nets-500m
  18. https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/12/06/leidos-parsons-win-spot-on-4b-nuclear-material.html
  19. http://www.caltech.edu/news/ralph-m-parsons-foundation-awards-1-million-grant-caltech-new-research-laboratory-1298
  20. https://www2.calstate.edu:443/impact-of-the-csu/support-the-csu/csu-trustees-awards/our-donors/Pages/ralph-m-parsons-foundation.aspx
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