PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Federal watchdogs are suing Portland-based Viewpoint Construction Software and its recruiting firm CampusPoint Corp., alleging they refused to hire a job applicant who is deaf.

Viewpoint makes software that construction firms use to plan and manage large projects. It sold to California company Trimble for $1.2 billion in 2018 but continues to operate under the Viewpoint name, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges Indigo Matthew applied to work as a Viewpoint product and pricing analyst in 2018. Matthew has substantial hearing loss but passed an initial screening from both companies, according to the lawsuit.

While one interview was done with help from a video relay service, and Matthew said he can read lips in individual meetings, the lawsuit says he requested an American Sign Language interpreter for his group interview.

According to the EEOC, Viewpoint and CampusPoint refused to pay for that and “erroneously assumed that Matthew would need a fulltime interpreter if he was hired for the analyst position.”

Viewpoint rejected Matthew’s application and he was unable to get them to reconsider, according to the EEOC.

Neither Viewpoint nor CampusPoint responded to requests for comment from the newspaper.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, seeks an injunction to block Viewpoint and CampusPoint from discriminating against job applicants and pay Matthew for lost compensation and unspecified punitive damages.

The post Lawsuit: Construction software firm refused to hire man who is deaf appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The first deck pour was carried out earlier this month for Beacon Lake Oswego, a four-story mixed-use building that will bring office, retail and event space to the city’s downtown. Crews with Bremik Construction, the project’s general contractor, and placement and finishing subcontractor LaRusso Concrete carried out a 580-cubic-yard pour March 1 to form the first floor of the post-tensioned concrete structure.

The Mackenzie-designed building is located in the heart of Lake Oswego, along Third Street between B and C avenues. It is being developed by 10 Branch, a family office consisting of members of the Haladay family – including managing director Miles Haladay, formerly of Viewpoint Construction Software, and his father, retired Viewpoint CEO and board chairman Jay Haladay.

According to Miles Haladay, a Lake Oswego resident, the family saw opportunities for niche event and office space in the city’s downtown core.

“We are firm believers in the downtown Lake Oswego area,” he said. “I like to call it a ‘boutique urban’ environment, an urban environment without the problems of downtown Portland.”

Ironlight, the top-floor event center created by Haladay family members, was borne of a lack of options outside Portland to hold events with 200-250 person capacity. The top floor will feature two decks with panoramic views, so large weddings and other events can be held either indoors or outdoors as weather permits.

The second and third floors, meanwhile, will be occupied by CENTRL Office, a Portland-based co-working startup. Downtown Lake Oswego, Haladay says, offers an attractive alternative to Portland.

“I think people are going to get tired of the traffic downtown and look for other options to be working in,” he said. “Downtown Lake Oswego … provides the best of both worlds. Everything you need you can walk to, but you don’t have the traffic that you have to deal with in downtown Portland.”

The building will hold about 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, some of which Haladay envisions being leased by a boutique market with coffee and grab-and-go food items. Parking for about 116 vehicles will be provided in below- and at-grade garage space.

Haladay cites recent growth in Lake Oswego’s downtown area, including PHK Development‘s Windward and Sturgeon Development Partners‘ North Anchor, as well as older projects like Gramor Development‘s Lake View Village, as evidence of a strong boutique urban core.

“Who’d have thought you’d have a Bamboo Sushi here, or a Salt and Straw, ten years ago?” he said. “I think this is just the beginning of downtown Lake Oswego becoming stronger and stronger.”

The project is scheduled for completion in early 2020, ideally in time for the first event at Ironlight – Jay Haladay’s 70th birthday party – to take place on Feb. 21.

The post Lake Oswego mixed-use building takes shape appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Portland home of an elderly, partially blind woman who lives alone was substantially upgraded last month by a team of volunteers with R&H Construction. The work was part of National Rebuilding Day – an effort by national nonprofit Rebuilding Together to provide critical home repairs and upgrades for low-income homeowners. The upgrades are done at no cost to the homeowners, who are often elderly and/or disabled and unable to physically and financially complete the work themselves.

On April 28, over 50 R&H employees, subcontractor volunteers and family members went to work on the Northeast Portland home. They painted the entire interior and exterior, framed a new fence and side gate as well as a back deck and stairs, performed ADA upgrades, installed new doors, brought in new kitchen appliances, and replaced bedroom windows upstairs. In addition, multiple improvements performed before National Rebuilding Day provided new flooring in the kitchen and bathroom, insulation and vapor barrier and new upstairs ceiling, new drywall, plumbing rough-in, furnace and ducted heating to the upstairs, and new lights, switches and outlets.

All told, approximately $60,000 in materials and labor were donated for the project. The work was done in collaboration with Rebuilding Together Portland, a local chapter of the national nonprofit. Other participating industry “house sponsors” included Turner Construction, P&C Construction, Swinerton Builders‘ The Swinerton Foundation, and Viewpoint Construction Software.

Out and About is a 91��Ƶ feature designed to help building industry companies in Oregon and Southwest Washington share their good news with 91��Ƶ readers. Email photos and information about company events, employee volunteer efforts, etc., to newsroom@djcOregon.com.

The post Out and About: Rebuilding Together appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Now that Silicon Valley tech company Trimble Inc. has agreed to acquire Portland-based Viewpoint Construction Software from Bain Capital for $1.2 billion (all cash), the business blend begins.

Viewpoint Construction Software was founded in 1976. Bain Capital, a Massachusetts private equity firm, invested $230 million in the company in 2014 before selling to Trimble just four years later, almost to the day.

Trimble, based in Sunnyvale, California, specializes in GIS mapping, data collection and integration, as well as construction and other software and hardware products. The deal follows the company’s February acquisition of Florida-based e-Builder and its portfolio of construction software.

Now, Viewpoint, following a year in which it experienced 30 percent growth, is poised to help Trimble cover all construction aspects under one software roof.

“What we’ve done at Viewpoint in the last few years is we created a great vision of bringing together office, team and field,” Viewpoint CEO Manolis Kotzabasakis said.

The office refers to the business end, including accounting and payroll, he said. The team is the entire team of companies and contractors involved, while the field is the jobsite and those actively working on a project at a given time.

“Having information across all three areas is very important to our customers,” Kotzabasakis said. “The last few years we’ve made that vision more clear.”

The acquisition by Trimble, he added, is intended to aid this work by adding that company’s technology – hardware and software – into the mix.

“We have a number of good technologies that we’ll be looking at to see how we could potentially bring them together,” Kotzabasakis said. “But it’s early days.”

Viewpoint grew to prominence in recent years with a suite of software that integrates a contractor’s financial and resource management with project operations at the jobsite. This allows the end user to manage data and workflows that span the construction life cycle from pre-production planning to project handover and beyond.

Now, officials are looking to blend that with Trimble’s wealth of experience in heavy equipment, autonomous vehicles, operator tool telemetry, smart tools and more.

“It’s not a secret that the construction industry lags behind most other major industries in pursuing advanced technologies to improve their productivity,” Mark Sawyer, Trimble’s director of construction industry strategy, stated in response to questions submitted via email. “But construction projects, whether they’re new commercial buildings or new public infrastructure projects, are complex, one-off endeavors, so it’s not as simple as buying a piece of technology and reaping instant benefits.”

The key is creating that one umbrella for the vast amount of information.

“We believe the opportunity to transform the industry lies in the coordinated management of information at all phases of the project and across many constituencies,” Sawyer stated. “We call that our construction life cycle strategy.”

Trimble’s recent acquisition of e-Builder provided additional planning and information management capability across both the private and public sectors. Viewpoint gives the company additional resource management and information management capability specifically for general and specialty contractors.

“They already had several important components of that continuum Manolis described,” said Matt Harris, Viewpoint’s chief product officer since 2011. “They were missing the systems contractors … use to coordinate their businesses and collaborate their offices with team activities and jobsite activities, and that’s where Viewpoint comes in.”

Viewpoint has built its reputation around a comprehensive suite of construction management software branded under the “office, team and field” banner. The firm has developed the means of integrating everything from estimating and bidding to managing and archiving.

“The ability to surface real time, or near real time construction project data into an owner-facing portal, that, in and of itself, we think will revolutionize the industry,” Harris said. “Those are the types of capabilities we have at our fingertips.”

Trimble does not yet have information to release about future products or plans, according to Sawyer.

“While it’s too early to make detailed statements about product development, we can say that our goal is unchanged,” he stated. “That is to offer a central workflow platform for delivering integrated, end-to-end construction solutions that will improve data flow across the complete construction life cycle.”

Viewpoint employs more than 700 local staffers and says it plans to stay in Portland along with the current executive team. Around half of the employees work at the company’s headquarters near the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge. The unit will continue operating under the Viewpoint brand for the foreseeable future.

This alone makes it a net positive for the city, Harris said.

“I think this is the great outcome for Viewpoint,” he said. “We have what we would consider our final home, so to speak, from an ownership perspective. Trimble is a demonstrated business operator – they invest in critical technology and platforms to enable automation in construction.

So we think it’s great for Viewpoint and we also think it’s a great outcome for Portland.”

Also, there is little to no overlap of business delivered by Trimble, Viewpoint and e-Builder, according to Kotzabasakis.

“It’s really complementary technologies,” he said.

So Trimble’s acquisition of Viewpoint made sense to both customers and shareholders, he said.

“It was an easy decision, if you want,” he said. “We have been getting inquiries about the company for a long time, and recently those inquiries increased significantly for three reasons.”

The first, he said, is that sales bookings in 2017 exceeded those in 2016 by 30 percent. The second is an attractive vision of “office, team and field.” The third, and most fundamental, is the digital revolution in construction.

At the end of the day, Kotzabasakis said, Trimble had the most attractive offer both financially and in terms of company culture and vision.

“They have dirty boots and hats in their DNA,” he said. “And we felt this is the right home for Viewpoint and the future of our technology and the benefits our customers are expecting from us.”

Harris agreed.

“Being part of something that really puts Portland on the map from a tech perspective and delivers this much impact on the industry on a global scale,” he said, “is something I think many of us are really quite proud of.”

The post Viewpoint expects little change after acquisition appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

California tech company Trimble Inc. has agreed to acquire Portland-based Viewpoint Construction Software from Bain Capital for $1.2 billion – all cash.

Trimble, based in Sunnyvale, California, specializes in GIS mapping, data collection and integration, as well as construction and other software and hardware products. The deal follows the company’s February acquisition of Florida-based e-Builder and its portfolio of construction software.

Viewpoint Construction Software was founded in 1976 in Portland. Bain Capital, a Massachusetts private equity firm, invested $230 million in the company in 2014 before selling to Trimble just four years later, almost to the day.

Viewpoint grew to prominence nationally with its suite of software that integrates financial and resource management with project operations on the jobsite. This allows the user to manage data and workflow that span the construction life cycle from pre-production planning to project handover.

The company has been leading a push to move the construction industry out of the analog era, according to Viewpoint CEO Manolis Kotzabasakis.

“The construction industry is embarking on a major digital transformation,” he stated in a news release issued Monday.

Viewpoint currently has an estimated 8,000 customers worldwide – primarily heavy highway and civil contractors, general contractors and specialist subcontractors.

The company employs more than 700 local staff and says it plans to stay in Portland along with the current executive team. Around half of Viewpoint’s employees work at the company’s headquarters near the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge. It will continue operating under the Viewpoint brand for the foreseeable future.

“Our operations will remain headquartered in Portland and our global offices will remain as they are,” Viewpoint spokeswoman Simmi Singh Corcoran said. “This is a great move for the construction industry. Trimble is a well-respected company and a leader in connecting the field to the enterprise, the transformation that construction is poised to make.”

The new partnership is a “perfect fit,” Kotzabasakis added, and will help construction companies further integrate digital operations as products from all three companies in the recent purchases are integrated across platforms and updated.

With Viewpoint software, for instance, users have a central workflow platform for end-to-end project management. In the future, Viewpoint will complement recently acquired of e-Builder products such as its cloud-based construction program management software. This will further extend the latter’s capabilities in the hands of general, specialty and heavy civil contractors and provide “end-to-end project transparency.”

Steven Berglund, president and CEO of Trimble, said the acquisitions are “strategically significant” and combine well with existing expertise.
“(They) position us to play a unique and central market role in providing comprehensive enterprise and project solutions,” he said.

The transaction is one of the largest ever involving an Oregon tech company. But it pales in comparison to a pair of deals done in recent years. Thermo Fisher Scientific closed on its purchase of Hillsboro-based FEI Corp. for $4.2 billion in 2016, and Siemens closed on its purchase of Wilsonville-based Mentor Graphics for $4.5 billion in 2017.

The post California firm acquires Viewpoint Construction Software for $1.2 billion appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Fed up with trash, excrement and complaints from office tenants, Central Eastside businesses are uniting to clean up the district.

The Central Eastside Industrial Council (CEIC) is forming an enhanced services district, said Brad Malsin, the council’s president. The district, similar to Clean & Safe (downtown Portland) and Go Lloyd, will pay for workers to remove litter, refer homeless individuals to social services and provide a watchful eye on the area.

The effort comes amid a surge of office development in the Central Eastside. As businesses such as Autodesk, Simple and Viewpoint Construction Services have opened large offices in the area, they’ve found an uneasy coexistence with the district’s homeless population.

“It hasn’t been pervasive, but it has been very disturbing that people are being accosted on the street, that their cars are being broken into,” said Brad Malsin, president of the CEIC and principal at Beam Development. “There’s excrement on the sidewalk and on doorsteps. That’s why we’re doing this enhanced services district. That’s why we’re going to try to take control.”

The district will be funded by assessments on property owners and by a share of revenue from new parking meters. Officials expect to launch the district in 2018.

Workers will patrol the district to clean up trash and watch for misbehavior, Malsin said. The district will provide portable toilets to improve sanitation, and there are ongoing discussions with Central City Concern to connect homeless individuals to supportive services.

“We obviously can’t eliminate homelessness overnight as much as we would love to – and we would love to not have people sleeping outside,” Malsin said. “We realize it’s a process.”

Portland’s homeless population has grown while the Central Eastside has transformed into a hip enclave for tech businesses and the services that follow. Where there were once warehouses and old-school industrial manufacturers, office workers can now get bison and Wagyu beef burgers at Stacked Sandwiches, and single-origin coffees at Water Avenue.

The juxtaposition has made for some strange encounters. One Central Eastside business, OMFG Co., battled a repeat offender who relieved himself on the windowsills. Eventually, the man was caught in the act and arrested, said Ashley Hildreth, studio manager at the branding consulting firm.

Hildreth said the office at the foot of the Burnside Bridge has also been the target of graffiti and detrimental window etching. At times, walking on the sidewalk can be impossible because of tents and tarps erected by homeless people camped there, Hildreth said.

“It’s just kind of a sketchy area,” she said. “The fact that it’s getting developed, though, in the next five years, this whole area will probably feel a whole lot different.”

The Central Eastside’s struggles with homelessness are not unique in Portland. The city and surrounding suburbs are experimenting with various approaches to reducing homelessness, from erecting “tiny houses” to expanding the budget for supportive services.

The sense of alarm seems to be increasing. Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle submitted an op-ed piece that The Oregonian published Nov. 10. He stated he was considering moving the apparel company’s downtown office after threatening incidents, thefts and problems with garbage and human waste. He suggested the city should hire more police officers.

Malsin said he moved forward with the enhanced services district after a meeting with Mayor Ted Wheeler made it clear the city does not have the resources to clean up the Central Eastside on its own. Malsin compared Portland to Seattle, which has a far larger police force, and New York City, which provides extensive emergency shelter.

In New York, Malsin said, “it costs them close to $1 billion a year, but nobody sleeps on the street. You get picked up, they take you to an apartment and you’re housed. I think that’s what we need. If we had the resources, we could do that.”

Malsin serves on the board of A Home for Everyone, and said he has tried to be part of the solution. Each night, 100 to 120 homeless people take shelter in Malsin’s ex-Shleifer Furniture building. Beam Development has plans to tranform the building into a boutique hotel, but for now, it functions as a shelter.

Malsin believes more resources are needed.

“The question is how much are we willing to sacrifice and pay to make sure people aren’t sleeping on the street?” he said.

Companies continue to come to the Central Eastside despite the homelessness problem. Autodesk, a design software company, revealed in May that it had agreed to lease 108,750 square feet in the renovated Towne Storage building. Autodesk will move more than 200 employees to the Burnside bridgehead location.

Strong job growth has helped fuel demand for creative-office space throughout central Portland. In the Central Eastside, developers have responded, with 369,706 square feet of office space under construction during the third quarter, according to Jones Lange LaSalle. Average asking rents rose to $32.02.

“They’re convinced this is where they need to be,” Malsin said. “They want to be amongst the creative firms, the grit and the energy in the district.”

The CEIC has advocated for zoning that encourages industrial office space and sets strict limits on housing and retail operations in the area. The new zoning is included in the city’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan.

Malsin, who was involved in the early stages of the Central Eastside’s transformation, said more changes are forthcoming.

“In this iteration of the Central Eastside, I think it’s still at the very beginning,” he said. “It’s at that nascent moment.”

Many former warehouses and factories have been purchased by developers and converted to creative-office space. But the area has the potential for much greater density, Malsin said.

“The density in the district is really on the minimal side,” he said. “With the new 2035 plan and the Southeast Quadrant plan, we have the opportunity to create a lot more of this kind of workspace. It’s going to take years to unfold, but I think the table’s been set.”

Another new effort coming to the district is the Innovation Quadrant, which seeks to bring educational institutions together with businesses.

Backers are trying to join Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and Portland Community College with companies such as Intel and Nike to advocate for workforce development.

The Innovation Quadrant will have a small office in the Towne Storage building, Malsin said.

“What we’re trying to do is connect the institutions to the businesses to the creative people in the district,” Malsin said. “There’s a strong desire to collaborate, and I think the Innovation Quadrant is about collaboration.”

The post Central Eastside businesses taking charge appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After a long and successful career, Jay Haladay, Viewpoint Construction Software‘s CEO and chairman of the board, announced his retirement last week.

Haladay, 65, said the demands of the job, with long hours and a heavy travel schedule, will continue to increase, so he’s decided to step down while remaining on the board of directors.

Viewpoint has grown tremendously since Haladay bought the company 27 years ago after running it for about three years. From a local firm with about 50 employees to a global company with close to 800 employees today, he said, Viewpoint will continue to grow, not just here, but around the world.

“Construction is a global business, even more than 20 or 30 years ago,” he said. “We now have customers in 26 countries and it’s important that we are considered a global brand.”

That global reach started in Canada about 10 years ago when Viewpoint was asked to develop software for American companies doing work there. The laws and requirements are different in Canada, of course, but eventually led to Viewpoint’s expansion into Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

“We made modifications to serve Canada, and once you do it for one British Commonwealth country it becomes easier,” Haladay said.

Haladay said his company has gotten a lot of assistance from Bain Capital, which has helped it expand.

“A private equity company is a very important source of not only capital for expansion, but also a lot of management guidance and expertise,” he said.

About a year ago, Bain bought out two other private equity groups invested in Viewpoint.

“They are much better positioned with companies they think will be a market leader,” Haladay said.” So they made a rational decision to be Viewpoint’s sole partner.”

Bain Capital grew out of Bain Consulting, Haladay said, and helps Viewpoint with best business practices.

“It’s always useful to have access to people who have ‘been there, done that,’ and Bain Capital is one of the top five or six in the world,” he said.

Bain’s expertise will help in choosing the next CEO for Viewpoint, Haladay said, and he will also have a hand in choosing his successor, by either promoting from within or doing a global search.

Whatever happens, Viewpoint will remain a family business. Haladay’s daughter is a meteorologist for a wind energy company, but his three sons all work for the company.

“The business reflects our family values and personalities,” he said. “They will have every opportunity to reinvent (Viewpoint), but whether they stay is up to them.”

Carrying family values into the workplace is just one reason Viewpoint has been so successful, Haladay said.

“If I had to look back at three or four elements that made me successful, I would say to find good people and give them a lot of rope,” he said. “You can’t micromanage them and I’ve delegated a lot to them.

“I’ve also opened my eyes to a lot of different markets and while some think of construction as dull, I’ve been able to look at our market in a unique way, been able to grow meaningfully in an area underserved by technology, and reached out to get information on things I don’t know about,” he said.

Keeping his personal life simple has been important to his success, Haladay said, and his wife has been an essential partner.

“My wife of 41 years has been incredibly supportive of what I’ve done,” he said. “We have a very strong relationship and I don’t know if I could have done it without a strong relationship with her. I can’t imagine doing what I’ve done if my personal life was a mess.”

Giving his personal life a higher priority is the reason he’s retiring, Haladay said.

“Over the last 15 years, I can’t think of more than four or five days where I haven’t thought about business,” he said. “Any successful business owner is crazy if they say they leave work at the office.”

Running Viewpoint and watching it grow has still been “a helluva lot of fun,” Haladay said, but now it’s time to reorder priorities and put his family first.

With a home on a golf course in Hawaii and another near a ski resort in Canada, the Haladays have plenty of options on how to spend their retirement.

“I want to play more golf and we are all avid skiers and snowboarders,” he said. “I’ve also ridden in Cycle Oregon and want to get back to more cycling.”

They also plan to travel a lot more. For his 65^th birthday, Renee Haladay gave her husband a ticket to the British Open in July, and that’s just for starters.

“In the fall we’re going to Iceland to see the northern lights,” he said. “And I’ve always wanted to see the Galapagos (Islands), so we will be doing that next year.”

The post A new point of view for Viewpoint’s Jay Haladay appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Viewpoint Construction Software has acquired Jobpac, a Sydney-based provider of construction software solutions to the Australia-New Zealand (ANZ) construction industry for more than 25 years. Viewpoint, headquartered in Portland, will maintain its Melbourne facility but move its ANZ headquarters to the Jobpac office.

Jay Haladay, Viewpoint’s CEO, said the company has been “very successful” serving the needs of construction companies around the globe.

“The combination of Viewpoint’s strong technical platforms, coupled with Jobpac’s deep construction experience and market presence, allows Viewpoint to expand and deepen its commitment to the Australian and New Zealand markets,” he said in a news release.

Last year, Viewpoint’s software won a spot on Construction Tech magazine’s Top Products for a fourth consecutive year, was a Contractor’s Choice winner in Roads & Bridges magazine, and won the title of 2014 Hot Product of the Year from Construction Executives magazine.

That kind of recognition doesn’t happen overnight, Haladay said, and he attributed the company’s strong reputation in both construction and technology to a business model built on three primary goals: make excellent products that evolve with the market, continually invest in the business and products to stay abreast of the market, and create a business where people like to work.

The post Portland-based firm acquires Australian company appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A grand opening was held March 12 for the 1510 Technology Center, a former PGE operations facility in the Central Eastside Industrial District that is now the expanded office of Viewpoint Construction Software. The building’s owner and project developer, Killian Pacific, enlisted general contractor Robertson & Olson Construction, Inc. and design firm Mackenzie to convert the 60,000-square-foot building into a modern office space that retains the structure’s industrial identity.

Contamination from highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which were used as a coolant in transformers, required extensive decontamination work on the building, including the removal of the top two inches of concrete slab.

The project included installation of a radiant cooling system in the building’s concrete floors, major structural upgrades, replacement of an old gabled roof, and installation of new industrial-style operable windows that retain the historic look of the old ones.

Sustainable design features include using old-growth Douglas fir wood reclaimed from the roof in the building’s interior design elements, including ceiling treatments, walls, and stairs, as well as stormwater treatment facilities, 100% LED lighting, and electric vehicle charging in the basement parking garage. Developers are seeking LEED platinum certification on the project.

The post Photos: Viewpoint debuts expanded office space appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

For Viewpoint Construction Software, 2014 was a very good year.

The Portland-based company’s award-winning software products won a spot on Construction Tech magazine’s Top Products for a fourth consecutive year, was a Contractor’s Choice winner in Roads & Bridges magazine, and won the title of 2014 Hot Product of the Year from Construction Executives magazine.

“That kind of success and recognition doesn’t come overnight,” Viewpoint CEO Jay Halladay said.

He attributes the company’s strong reputation in the dual worlds of construction and technology to a business model built on three primary goals: make excellent products that evolve with the market, continually invest in the business and products to stay abreast of the market, and create a business where people like to work.

“By continuing to invest in our product, in spite of economic slumps, we keep an edge in the marketplace,” Halladay said. “Technologies in construction and software change rapidly, and we are focused on keeping up with those changes. Construction software has been around a long time, over 30 years, and a lot of companies have come and gone. We’ve continued to grow because we invested in our product, our people and our business.”

The firm recently renovated the circa 1911 Hawthorne Building, the former home of Portland General Electric’s machine shop.

The 60,000-square-foot, two-story building posed a daunting challenge – over the years, toxic PCBs had leaked onto the concrete flooring. But Viewpoint leaders also believed the building offered the open spaces the company needed, so they adopted what Halladay calls a “taking lemons and making lemonade” approach.

The top two inches of the contaminated concrete were removed, and a full-level, radiant heating and cooling system was installed.

The building is on track to earn a LEED platinum designation, Halladay said. Once renovation work is completed in mid-March, the company will use the building as a home base for what it expects will be a significant number of hires by the end of the year.

“We’ve grown at a tremendous rate … I see that pace continuing,” Halladay said. “Global construction is vibrant and healthy, and our products and business practices will ensure we stay on top of the market.”

The post 2015 Newsmakers: Viewpoint Construction Software appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.