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Q: Tell us about your company. A: Edgewater is a small business Technology and Innovation leader to Federal customers for Management and Information Technology services on programs of national importance. We hold a Top-Secret Facilities Clearance and 40% of our 187 employees hold a Top Secret or equivalent security clearance. Our strength, represented by our motto, “Our People…Your Edge” meaning we provide the right people to solve our customer’s challenges to give them the edge they need to be successful. We joined the Fort Detrick Alliance in December 2019, just prior to moving our corporate office from Ijamsville to Frederick. We look forward to contributing to the success of the Alliance and the mission of Fort Detrick in sustaining our vital national interests. Joining the Alliance will give us an additional opportunity to contribute to the good of the local community. We perform regular outreach in the greater Frederick Community. Two examples of that include our regular volunteer efforts at the Frederick Rescue Mission and most recently, Hometown Heroes donations during the novel coronavirus pandemic. These efforts are led by Edgewater’s Corporate Operations Director, Ms. Cherie Wigfield, who will be joining the marketing and events committees. We just moved into our new office in January of this year located at 5280 Corporate Drive, ST C130, Frederick, MD 21703  Q: It is the Alliance’s mission to connect businesses to the Federal agencies and Fort Detrick community through networking events and outreach. How has the Alliance assisted you in making these types of connections? A: We are just getting started on this but so far, we are very impressed with the events we have attended and connections we have made. The Fort Detrick Alliance/FITCI Tech showcase last fall and the member appreciation event in January were both fantastic. Q: How does your company encourage innovation in your workplace? Can you discuss a connection that you have made through the Alliance that has assisted in you with innovations in your company or career? A: Not only do we innovate in our corporate office and on our federal contracts, once we do, we establish programs to ensure our customers make innovation a regular part of their strategic initiatives and then tactically execute on them. Most recently we have embraced the use of MS Teams in our corporate office and have started implementing it at client sites. The real-time ability to collaborate on MS Office artifacts, share timely information, etc. has resulted in major efficiency gains for Edgewater and our customers! We encourage innovation by providing a significant training budget for our team to learn and stay current with new tools and technologies. We routinely review and use emerging tools and technologies in areas like collaboration, cybersecurity and process automation. Q: What is the greatest benefit to maintaining your membership? A: The ability to network, embrace new relationships and further existing relationships are the keys for us. It is always helpful to hear the latest and greatest from colleagues outside of our organization and to share experiences that have helped us to be successful. We have also been a part of the Frederick County community for a long time, but most of our customers who we bring innovation to are located outside of Frederick County. We would like to grow our workforce within Frederick and contribute to the community and customers where we have decided to put down our roots. Q: What advice would you give to other business leaders in our community, related to Fort Detrick or the Alliance? A: Ask around, talk to Amanda, have a meeting with her to perform your due diligence like we did. I think you will find the Alliance is a great thing to be a part of if you want to do business with the Fort. Our initial discussions with representatives from the Fort have been very positive and helpful. They have a real desire to share information and are helping us establish the right connections so we will be able to have the opportunity to bring our high quality offerings to the Fort, similar to many of the other federal agencies we have supported in the past. Q: From the events you have attended through the Alliance, is there one that has been the most helpful and why? A: A couple of our history buffs attended the member appreciation event in January at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Not only were they able to each tour the facility for the first time, which they really enjoyed, they made some initial connections that have resulted in follow up meetings and the like. Those connections will help us to develop a network and a footprint within the technology and innovation community within Frederick and the Fort. Q: Would you like to share any news about your company or its recent achievements? A: Edgewater was recently one of the first 40 small businesses onboarded onto the GSA OASIS Small Business Pool 1 vehicle. This is an opportunity for customers to access a pool of highly qualified professional services providers across the government sector. Our strong history of consistent and quality performance provided the qualifications that allowed us to be awarded that vehicle. We also have GSA IT-70 and Professional Services Schedule vehicles. Our ISO 9001 Quality Management, ISO/IED 20000-1 IT Service Management, ISO/IEC Information Security Management, CMMI SVC/3, and CMMI DEV/3 certifications along with our strong performance history allow us to offer federal agencies small business credits with a strong performance history equivalent or better than many large businesses. Here are a few of our recent achievements:
Q: How (if applicable) has your company or workplace been involved in COVID-19 prevention through research, supply and product distribution, testing, training, etc.? How can your work on COVID-19 benefit the community or Federal agencies at Fort Detrick? A: We have developed a Hometown Heroes program where we give back to the brave men and women supporting on the front lines during this pandemic. We have provided food donations to the Arbutus Fire Department, Carroll Health- Transporters Unit, Station 6 Bethesda and Medic Team, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Unit 3SESDH-Hematology/Oncology Team, and monetary donations to Thrive DC, Blessings in a Backpack (Frederick Chapter), and the Frederick Rescue Mission. We also recently worked with Erickson Retirement Communities, who was looking for a partner to help rapidly develop a system to manage the COVID-19 virus impact across their communities. With the rapid rise of COVID-19 and the at-risk population within the communities, Erickson needed a system that would allow staff to easily gather and enter information and for management to review and quickly analyze key data points. We partnered with Erickson to develop the system and deploy it throughout their organization. The system utilizes industry leading technologies to collect, store and report the information including ReactJS, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon QuickSite. Using Amazon’s rich data analysis tool QuickSite, Edgewater developed dashboards that display key measures, targets and trends for tracking COVID-19. Users at the community locations are entering required information into the online forms daily and that data is stored in AWS cloud databases and presented to key Erickson stakeholders to support decision-making. The system is also using predictive analytics in order to better forecast future impacts related to key data points. Erickson is using this system daily to manage resources and risks, everything from supplies to response priorities. This system has become a mission-critical tool in Erickson’s fight against COVID-19 Q: Is there anything we didn’t cover here that you would like people to know about your company or the Alliance? A: On the working culture side of things, our founder, Richard Yockman, is the heart and soul of Edgewater. He founded Edgewater in 2002 after having led the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in embracing innovative solutions. All our staff embrace that same mentality today in bringing effective, efficient, high quality, innovative solutions to our clients. One reason our employees love working here is on every birthday and work anniversary, Richard sends a personal email to our staff members wishing them a happy birthday or anniversary, and he does so in a fun and engaging way. We recently had a corporate outing at Flying Barrel where we brewed our own “Edgewater” beer. We usually do something similar each quarter. We work hard and take care of our employees, making sure we have fun along the way. From the mission support perspective in how we are supporting our customers, our Top Secret Facilities Clearance and our excellent performance history at such facilities support our strong efforts across federal agencies to secure our nation. We have deep experience in mission critical work within Department of Energy and are currently expanding into other government agencies. We also we have specific qualifications in IT modernization efforts within government agencies as we focus on innovation, process improvements and new and emerging tools and technologies in addition to general IT and Professional Services support. We will be featuring our members in Member Profile or Q&A articles in the coming weeks. If you are interested in being featured, please email [email protected]. Comments are closed.
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Fort Detrick Alliance. All Rights Reserved.
PO Box 822 | Frederick, Maryland 21705 301.788.9896 Email: [email protected] | sitemap |
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