things make a bigger difference. “The lighting is a lot better than in the old building, and the floors are much nicer. It’s much easier to find screws now when you drop them,” said Leslie, a repair and production technician for the Boeing subsidiary that produces the ScanEagle and Integrator unmanned systems. While Insitu has grown rapidly during the past decade, the need to add space and employees often outpaced the time needed for a careful facility expansion. As a result, the company at one point occupied nearly 30 buildings spread out on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the Columbia River. Especially for the production work, there still wasn’t enough room, said Ahmad Ziada, Insitu’s director of production operations. “We were over capacity at our old production building. We were using every nook and cranny there,” he said. Insitu’s operations now occupy about half that number of buildings after the recent opening of the company’s Eagle Point facility. The company moved into the new space last summer, said Jennifer Taylor, facilities director at Insitu, with logistical and site leasing assistance from Boeing’s Real Estate division. Eagle Point includes 120,000 square feet (11,000 square meters) of production, maintenance, warehouse and office space, more than double the space in the previous production building and nearly five times bigger than Insitu’s original production site, Taylor said. It also is the only LEED Silver–rated industrial building in the Columbia Gorge area, an internationally recognized certification for best-in-class building energy efficiency and low environmental impact. Skylights draw in natural light. Large windows do the same and offer panoramic views of the colorful hills on either side of the Columbia River. Employees also can take a break on a deck overlooking the river, on which many of them wind-surf or enjoy in other ways when they’re away from work. The building’s research and development space includes special rooms for engine testing that are outfitted with high-tech air-scrubbing systems to handle exhaust fumes. Acknowledging those features are important, Ziada said the real value in the new building is how it helps employees perform their jobs better and more easily, with less physical strain on their bodies. The production space for ScanEagle and Integrator now is set up for a linear production flow, much like the final assembly lines used by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “I think we always have had a collaborative culture, but the facilities didn’t always allow that,” Ziada said, explaining that managers, engineers and production technicians worked in places that were about a Photos: (Above) Manufacturing and repair technicians Obeth Juarez, left, and Sam Cieslinski install avionics into a ScanEagle fuselage. (Right) Kevin Block, manufacturing and repair technician, performs a preflight inspection of a ScanEagle. 18 BOEING FRONTIERS
Frontiers April 2015 Issue
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