Booz Allen Hamilton has expanded its footprint in the Pacific with a new office in Downtown Honolulu.
Now in the First Hawaiian Center on Bishop Street, the consulting firm recently held a blessing ceremony for the new space, which aims to meet talent growth and mission demand, the company said.
Pacific Business News was given a tour of the office, which incorporates the company's commitment to sustainability and the firm's "NextGen" standards.
Among its features, an AI and Innovation Center has high-tech gadgets and equipment – including virtual reality head sets, model cars driven using artificial intelligence, lidar cameras, drones and even an EKG sensor – available for use.
"We are an IT consultant ... but really what we invest in is cutting-edge technology and we bring that to the mission space," said Ed Barnabas, principal/director of Booz Allen's Indo-Pacific Strategic Innovation Group. "This room is where all of our technical talent come and get to do cool things. ... So this is actually where we take very abstract ideas, but we convey them in ways that can be more relatable. It's one thing to tell our clients about artificial intelligence, but when you can convey it through, like, a self-driving car, it actually is able to make the idea a little bit more relatable because it's tactile ... So really, this is where the team comes to do things like that, but also to build real solutions that we actually deploy for our clients."
The company will not only bring in clients to the space, but the community as well, he said.
The new office also includes a variety of work and meeting spaces for employees.
Vice President and Honolulu leader Bob Lietzke said the NextGen floor plan has leadership offices nestled in the interior, along with collaboration spaces, while the areas where a majority of people are going to work are out toward the windows.
"We have very few actual offices, and even those are hoteling," he explained, which means offices and work spaces are not assigned, but instead can be checked out as needed.
All spaces are available to anybody on the team, Barnabas said, adding that when surveyed, most employees within the company said they would like to keep a hybrid working schedule in the future.
"So the idea of assigning an office to one person when theoretically no one's going to be in the office every day doesn't make a lot of sense."
Additionally, Lietzke said a small local team of employees helped with the design efforts to bring the culture, history and values of Hawaii into the new space.
Every art piece, for example, comes from a local artist, and a living, self-sustaining moss-covered wall bears the company's purpose and values in both English and Hawaiian.
The firm said in an announcement that the new, larger office space follows a nearly 10% growth in the last year alone.
“Booz Allen has been investing in resources in Hawaii for decades, hiring and cultivating top-tier talent in AI, systems delivery, cyber, and other critical skills and building state-of-the-art facilities where we can co-create with our clients,” Senior Vice President Rex Jordan, who serves as senior leader for the firm’s global enterprise in the region, said in a statement. “With the Indo-Pacific region on the front line of the biggest defense pivots in years, our new office strengthens our ability to deliver capabilities that INDOPACOM can field immediately and scale quickly.”
Lietzke said the new office space was completed in May 2020 but because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the company did not begin using the space until summer 2021.
He did not know the exact cost of the move, but said it was "extremely competitive."
Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, the firm employees about 29,200 people globally and had $7.9 billion in revenue for the 12 months ending March 31.
Booz Allen has had a presence in Hawaii since 1961 when the firm worked with Kamehameha Schools to develop a strategy for the future. Dedicated facilities opened in the Islands in the early 2000s.
According to the company, Booz Allen Hawaii meets critical Indo-Pacific missions with clients like INDOPACOM and supports U.S. government, Department of Defense, and civilian agencies in the Islands as well as in Guam, Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Alaska.
