IBM manager boots up service center

Inside IBM’s renovated building at 2810 LeMone Industrial Blvd. near the end of October, a couple dozen workers were carrying in new furniture, putting up white boards and checking computer equipment and electronics.
The activity inside the vast steel-framed structure will soon be much more frenetic. In the coming weeks, droves of information technology specialists will arrive as Big Blue begins operations in its new service delivery center.
Jim Chapdelaine, the center’s director, marveled at the building’s swift transformation as he strolled through the freshly remodeled interior.
Less than six months ago, this was a quiet, nearly empty warehouse. The general contractor, Little Dixie Construction, directed its subcontractors to tear down everything but the steel shell and put up what is essentially a new building.
In the end, the $10 million construction project came in ahead of schedule and under budget, City Manager Bill Watkins said.
“They gave us a deadline they didn’t think we could meet,” he said. “We beat it.”
Now, the gleaming exterior of IBM’s new service delivery center contrasts sharply with the worn neighboring warehouses.
“They’ve done a fantastic job,” Chapdelaine said. “The building’s gorgeous. The team they put together was just phenomenal.”
Chapdelaine himself has made a speedy transition. He and his wife, Jennifer, moved from the mountains of Colorado to the edge of the Ozark Plateau in Columbia with their five children two months ago. They already feel at home, he said.
Their kids quickly got involved in sports and activities around town. His neighbors invited him to a barbecue. The schools and teachers have wowed him. And though the 44-year-old Colorado native misses the Rockies sometimes, he has been pleasantly surprised with the mid-Missouri landscape.
“With all the trees and the rolling hills, I’ve been impressed with the terrain here,” Chapdelaine said. “You drive five minutes, and you’re kind of in country, wherever you’re at.”

Chapdelaine grew up in Paonia, a coal-mining, ranching town of no more than 2,000 people in the western part of the state. He went to the University of Colorado in Boulder and graduated with a degree in information systems management. Right out of college, he landed a programming job with IBM at one of its facilities in Boulder.
But he didn’t stay a programmer long. He soon got into management, and in 1996 he moved from Boulder to San Jose to manage a group of administrators and engineers at an IBM research facility.
“My whole plan was to get into management, and I knew I had to start somewhere,” Chapdelaine said. “A programming slot with IBM is perfect, a perfect place to start.”
In 2005, he moved back to Boulder, where he was a manager at IBM’s service delivery center. In August, he assumed his new position here: director of cross competency services.
Chapdelaine and other company officials would not disclose how many people have been hired so far, but there are more than 50 positions being advertised on IBM’s website, and the company has said it will hire up to 800 workers by the end of 2012. When the company hits specific job-creation thresholds, it has to report the numbers to the state to receive certain tax credits.
If there’s one point Chapdelaine is adamant about keeping clear, it’s that the IBM facility is not a data center.
“This is a delivery center,” Chapdelaine said. “It’s all a labor-based business.”

The inside of the new facility makes that clear. From one wall to another, the floor is covered with desks. And the company is on track to fill them, Chapdelaine said.
“The applicant pool has been very good,” he said. “We’ve gotten some very good candidates, and I think we’re going to be very successful here with what we’re getting.”
In fact, the response to IBM’s job offers in Columbia has been so good that Regional Economic Development Inc. is coordinating an information technology summit to help existing employers who are losing IT workers to Big Blue.
“There are employers in our region, including Jefferson City, that could be impacted,” REDI President Mike Brooks said at the group’s October meeting.
Workers at IBM’s facility will provide IT services for clients’ hardware and software systems. Workers will provide systems administration, storage, server management, security, backup and recovery and project management, Chapdelaine said.
For now, Chapdelaine is focusing on recruiting and training new workers. There have been “quite a few” local applicants, Chapdelaine said, and IBM still plans to work with MU to develop curriculum to generate even more locally grown employees. With the building completed, Chapdelaine said people should begin working there within the next month.
The company has already begun meetings with local leaders about its Smarter Cities initiative, a program billed as a way to help communities grow intelligently. And it also met with local nonprofits to discuss the kind of work IBM does in the communities it is in.
“Just moving here to Columbia has been fantastic,” Chapdelaine said. “We’re looking forward to being a good corporate citizen here in the community.”