Who We Are
Industrial TurnAround Corporation began its journey in 1988 in Hopewell, VA, when Sidney Harrison realized a tremendous need for a local engineering company that understood the industrial consumer. He wanted to “provide quality design and build services to the industrial plant engineering and maintenance market” while “developing a partnership with plant engineering and maintenance organizations acting as an extension of those organizations”. Luckily, the inception of his vision coordinated with the then national trend of downsizing of manufacturing engineering and design staff. He found many capable employees looking for jobs and provided them with a place where they could showcase their skills.
Thus ITAC was born from humble beginnings on 922 East Randolph Road. Ray Harrison of Harrison Mechanical, Sidney’s brother, provided a rented office space and a $5,000 loan. As our staff grew over time, Sidney leased trailers and put them behind the ITAC shop. Soon, a two-story office building was needed to accommodate the continued company growth. Once ITAC outgrew that space, Sidney moved the company into a multi-story building in Hopewell, VA. Finally, ITAC found its home in a 35,000 square foot office space in Chester, VA.
Our neighbors became our major client base – Stone Container, Goldschmidt Chemical, Hercules, Firestone, and Allied. Within 5 years, the company grew to 30 personnel and had reached over $12MM in sales. This rapid growth allowed us to achieve the honor of Richmond Metropolitan's Rising 25 for the first time in 1993.
As our business expanded, our services became more specialized, bringing larger projects and an even bigger staff. We built strong and lasting relationships with our clients. And, just as importantly, we became a family. We found that solving project and company challenges together made us even stronger, improving our knowledge and performance week by week.
We pride ourselves on our adaptability. Many of our customers have changed; changed names, changed management, and changed business practices, and we work to earn their business everyday. We delight in developing new and innovative ideas to the project delivery processes to suit their varying needs.
At ITAC, our client comes first. Our projects are engineering-led and construction-driven, thus minimizing the costs of engineering and maximizing the constructability of the project, which in turn delivers lower costs and fewer surprises for the client. ITAC excels at the small single discipline plant project all the way to managing multi-million dollar turn-key design/build projects.
Starting in 2000, we began to modify our facilities to the ever-growing demand of our business and haven’t looked back. We developed smaller offices in Greenville, NC and Chesapeake, VA. In 2004, we acquired Electrical Mechanical Services, Inc. (EMSI) and integrated self-perform construction into our services. We have diversified our construction contracting services to penetrate the exploding commercial and light manufacturing markets. Because of these industry expansions, we are looking forward to moving our headquarters to a new, 65,000 sq ft. office space in April 2008.
Today, we employ over 150 engineers, designers, and project and construction managers in our engineering, on-site, and design/build staff. We also have up to 150 self-perform construction personnel. Together, we have built one of the strongest vertically integrated design/build firms in Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region, focusing on the small to mid-sized project market for the industrial and manufacturing plants.
After 20 years together, ITAC has grown even through two economic down turns. We refused to use the economy as an excuse for not meeting our goals by finding new markets, more customers, and the very best employees. Our company is mature, our direction focused, our staff well-trained and experienced, all to serve you better.
But even though we have come a long way from that rented office space, our journey has just begun. We want to be a major player in the Mid-Atlantic region in the years to come while building a company of which our clients and our employees to be proud. Great companies are built from humble beginnings, strong values, sound work ethic, solid principles, and a vision to lead. Our history is our future and we look forward to all the continued success it has to offer.