CCA Builds on Construction Services

Linda Staley spent 18 years as a contract specialist for the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Department of Justice before joining Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) in 1984. She came to know CCA working on the company’s very first procurement for privatizing a detention facility, the Houston Processing Center. Since then, using a prototypical design that CCA has refined over the years, CCA has planned and constructed another 33 turnkey facilities, and renovated or expanded another nine facilities, both owned and managed-only. Though Staley had no background in design when she joined CCA, she learned the field mentored by Vice President of Project Development G. Etheridge Vick and other company leaders. Staley took over Vick’s position 10 years later. In 1998, her title was changed to vice president of design and construction.

Correctional News: What are your responsibilities as VP of design and construction? How many people do you oversee?

Linda Staley: As my title says, I am responsible for design and construction of all the facilities at CCA. Part of that is also maintenance of the facilities once they are up and constructed. Most of our contracts have a maintenance requirement whether or not we own the facilities. Maintenance has become a strong point for our company in the past few years because we now have facilities that are coming on 20 years of age and they are starting to require maintenance.

I have a department of six people. Two of them are involved in the design and construction end, three are involved mainly with maintenance of our facilities and I have an assistant. Primarily we contract for the design, architectural and engineering services from criminal justice, and we rely on their expertise. Mostly, we put together the teams that will do our design and construction and then oversee the project as it develops. We don’t actually do any architectural work in-house.

CN: What are CCA’s projections for construction over the next five years?

LS: CCA has gone through kind of a reorganization since 2001 and we started some initial expansions, renovations and construction in 2004. We are hoping to start our first full, from the ground up, facility in 2005 and I expect that we will continue to grow at a very controlled rate in the future. In the past, CCA had a history of sort of spec building and that probably won’t happen in the near future.

CN: Are their any regions you are focusing on for construction?

LS: No, there isn’t any emphasis on any particular area. We go where the customer need is. Right now that appears to be in the southwest.

CN: Who are CCA’s customers? Federal, state, local?

LS: All three. We have quite a few big federal contracts. They have turned out to be a very good customer. Quite a few state contracts and not as many local. Our business development section is focusing on expanding the local arena. We look at projects that are good business for CCA and we’re not particular who the customer is, necessarily.

CN: Do you see the slowdown in prison construction continuing on the state level?

LS: I think, on the state level, most states that we encounter have budget problems and they are looking for alternative ways to solve their incarceration problem, which seems to continue to grow. Some states have seen a decline, but for the most part there’s a continued growth. They don’t have the money for prisons or, if they have a budget surplus, there are other entities vying for those dollars, such as education. The prisons sometimes don’t get built when they need to be built and then the states look to the private sector to help them. That’s what we’re here for.

CN: Do you expect federal work to remain strong for CCA?

LS: We’ve had a real strong showing with the federal agencies. We have several contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. They have some more solicitations coming out in the future, we understand. We have the U. S. Marshals; they are a very good customer. Their populations are in various facilities that we operate. The immigration services, which is now known as the Immigration Customs Enforcement Service, is also a good segment of our business. We have several contracts with them.

CN: What kinds of construction are you working on? Dorms or individual cells?

LS: We do a combination; it depends on the population and security level and what the customer wants. For the most part we primarily build cells.

CN: Would you talk a bit about how design/construction concepts can affect staffing?

LS: We have found that staffing is the long-term, continued cost. If you can reduce your staffing by your design, in the long run we can offer a better product to our customers. What we try to do is design our facilities to take the least number of staff and we do that by a combination of bricks and mortar and technology.

Mainly, we use computer-type technology. We have an inmate management system that is just coming out of the ground this last year that will help with our staffing levels. You will need fewer people to do the same amount of work because you’re doing it on computers. On the construction and design end of it, we try to maximize the number of inmates that we put in the housing unit, to be managed by the fewest number of officers. That helps our staffing levels which help on our long-term costs.

CN: Can you tell us about the relationship between design/construction and energy efficiency?

LS: In the past several years we have noticed, as has everyone, that energy costs are skyrocketing. That is a major element of our budget process; looking at our utilities and how we can reduce them. We’ve started using more energy efficient equipment, such as HVAC units and boilers. We are trying to maximize the types of materials that will add energy efficiency, such as roofs and insulation.

We also work with an energy management company that helps us control our rates by consolidating some of our consumption usage. We’ve found that this has helped our company save money. They also offer assessments at our facilities so that we can make equipment changes that will help us with our utility costs. We are always looking for new, innovative ways to cut our utility expenses.

CN: How do you balance first costs with long-term maintenance?

LS: That’s a tricky scenario because there’s a school of thought that says you want to build your facility as cheaply as possible in the beginning. In my opinion, you build smart and spend some first costs that you may not spend otherwise, so that you can save long-term maintenance costs. We don’t have sophisticated chiller systems in most of our facilities because we find that they are harder to maintain, they take a higher level of expertise.

We try to design facilities that are sensible and easy to maintain. Our facilities are located, sometimes, in very remote areas and getting qualified staff is a challenge. We try to keep the systems as simple as possible so that they’re easy to maintain. Often, you have to spend a little more up front to get the simpler systems, but in the long run it cuts the maintenance costs.

CN: In what direction are private prisons going? What is the next change you see? Geriatrics?

LS: There has been some emphasis in the last several years on Special Needs type facilities. From what I’ve seen, even though most states need those types of facilities, they really can’t afford them. There hasn’t been a big move towards privatizing those types of facilities.

The population is aging and we take care of a full range of ages of inmates, but we don’t have any special facilities that are set aside for geriatrics or special needs. There are a lot of mental health problems out there now, and those inmates require special care. We have them in our population, but the facilities are not designated just for those types of inmates.

CN: What are some of the challenges that are facing the private prison industry?

LS: I think growth is our biggest challenge, our controlled growth. Still, there are states out there that haven’t embraced privatization yet, and on a going-forward basis, our business development people will be trying make inroads into those states and show them the benefits of privatization. I think that’s our biggest challenge, educating those who don’t realize the benefits.

CN: Have you faced any personal challenges?

LS: No, I think I’ve been very fortunate. I’m probably in a male dominated sector of the industry. You don’t see many female design and construction professionals out there. It’s been a challenge but there haven’t been any particular hurdles to overcome. It hasn’t been an issue for me.

I had no idea I’d ever be in the corrections industry, but here I am. It’s been a fascinating 19 or 20 years that I’ve been with CCA. I couldn’t have asked for a more interesting career, that’s for sure.