Innovation has been the nucleus of our evolution and growth since our founding in 1944. It is the spirit that drives our diverse set of employees around the world to imagine solutions that not only address complex challenges, but advance national security, facilitate community connections, and deliver a better world.
As innovation drives our growth, this core value travels from our team to our customers through an increasingly high-powered and globally diverse workforce who bring their own unique experiences, perspectives, and technical and creative ingenuity – unlocking the full power of Parsons.
While there are numerous examples of innovation across the enterprise, let’s focus on four real-time ones, beginning with our innovation identity, and ending with our One Parsons approach.
Our Innovation Identity
How do we qualify innovation – what does it really mean?
Innovation is the process of creating value by applying novel solutions to meaningful problems.
We foster a culture of innovation cutting across our entire footprint. We create an environment that explores different ways of solving problems for our customers.
As a 78-year-old company, we have long-term tested and vetted partnerships with whom we’ve worked, teamed, and succeeded side by side. No matter the business, our teams are ingrained with our customers and their critical missions. As engineers, creators, and integrators, we marry mission intimacy with novel ideas that evolve into concepts, conversations, and white papers that our teams test for effect and execute solution concepts.
In addition to mission understanding, we have deep operational understanding, with intrinsic knowledge on how our customers execute their missions. For example, we have a long history of implementing infrastructure design to support national security by combating emerging digital threats to critical infrastructure. Connecting mission understanding with our own operational experience positions us to be innovative in ways not previously imagined.
Parsons X: Transforming Project Delivery
Infrastructure is the interface to our shared world. From helping rebuild post World War II Europe after passage of the Marshall Plan to designing the ICT infrastructure for Dubai’s flagship smart city project in 2018, to helping aviation customers today realize the potential of leveraging their assets for improved efficiency, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness; we have always been innovators in the critical infrastructure realm. So too have we been at the forefront of the data revolution and increasing interconnectedness of infrastructure and national security, and the cyber and space domains.
As we continue to transform as an organization, we are changing the way we think about project delivery. Through Parsons X, we are materializing innovation in our business by upgrading the infrastructure interface that is critical to humanity. Parsons X enhances our decades of digital leadership by tapping innovation from across the company, providing our customers with fast, secure, practical digital solutions that meet their toughest challenges across critical infrastructure and national security.
Our project delivery enterprise must be data driven – and it must be measured. If we can’t measure our project delivery, we can’t improve it. We measure it by analyzing our best practices, establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and then measuring effectiveness and pushing for continuous improvement.
Digital acceleration is central to Parsons X. Our customers’ missions guide how we are transforming specific capabilities into real world digital delivery mechanisms. We use digital capabilities, digital partnerships, new technology, and integrated delivery mechanisms in an organized, strategic way to provide customized solutions for our customers. Through Parsons X, we will continue delivering first of its kind digital services while expanding existing customer relationships through development of new digital delivery models.
PALADIN Lab: Unlocking Innovation
Another way we are materializing innovation is by developing emerging technology and applying it to new business and practice areas as we deliver mission-critical technology integration across the national security sector.
For decades, our innovative solutions have accelerated the warfighter’s decision chain and unlocked the all-domain battlespace. At our newly unveiled PALADIN Lab, we are combining that experience, and best of breed solutioning approach with our collaborative partnership mentality to create a disruptive, open makerspace designed to foster new technologies and capabilities for the warfighter.
Located on the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, PALADIN Lab connects industry, academia, and the Department of Defense, enabling us to leverage internal technology-driven innovation for direct customer benefit. The Lab will redefine what it means to rapidly assess, integrate, and deploy emerging capabilities for operational mission requirements.
Through Parsons X, we are also evolving our PALADIN Lab to demonstrate the breadth of our Critical Infrastructure capabilities and expand R&D efforts across the enterprise. As we show the cross-pollination of technology between Critical Infrastructure and Federal, we will continue co-locating teams at the lab while hosting virtual lab sessions and clients from around the globe to demonstrate innovations that will advance their missions.
One Parsons
Merging our technology and overall capability set powers innovation through collaborative problem-solving across all markets – this is the essence of One Parsons. We apply technology from different markets and adapt it to solve problems in other areas of the business.
- PeARL™ Flash & Engineering Design: Our engineers are merging technology from our Defense & Intelligence (D&I) business unit with existing engineering tools to collect as built data for designs within our Mobility Solutions and Connected Communities business units. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) uses our PeARL™ collection systems on manned and unmanned platforms in challenging combat environments to assess threats and aid mission planning efforts. While PeARL™ Flash is typically used for 2D and 3D processing of airborne imagery for mission planning, our engineers are tapping this technology to identify more detailed building footprints during design. Our PeARL™ Flash team recently performed an aerial pilot test to gather data which our engineering team used to create a more accurate, integrated model, marrying the PeARL™ Flash aerial low-resolution coverage with the engineering team’s high-resolution site-focused data.
- OrbitXchange and the Space Mission: Within the D&I business unit, we are converging our technical capabilities to support the expansion of our space mission capabilities. This year, we invested in the continued enhancement of our OrbitXchange capability, which supports our Space customers with comprehensive command and control capabilities. We used cloud engineers across the company who have supported the DoD cloud modernization strategy to migrate OrbitXchange to a cloud-based deployment; while our cross-business unit Cyber teams supported advanced concepts associated with securing satellite communications at scale.
- Our People: We also created the Guild this year, an organization dedicated to the mentorship, career progression, and cross-sector collaboration between D&I staff, from our newest hires to our senior-level leaders. The Guild supports driving innovation through communication and collaboration, exposing our technical capabilities and advancements to the broadest audience possible. Through this exposure, we have created an environment where capabilities and solutions created in one sector are now being adopted to solve customer problems in other sectors.
- Our Focus: We recognize the importance of staying true to our core values. With a renewed dedication to innovation, we have also established the Innovation Council, designed to enhance and unify strategic efforts across the enterprise, reward creative and effective ideas, and provide resources and opportunities for our best and brightest to continue creating our future.
We are engineering our environment of innovation. By redesigning our performance approach through digitization and cross market collaboration, we are unlocking the power to imagine the future as we innovate what comes next. Our approach to innovation is infinite as we deliver a better world by taking ideation to the next level – and the next – and the next.