Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP
Global Operations Center (GOC)
Wheeling, WV
Cost Savings: Over $5 million per year.
Partnership: Cooperation between all parties allowed this 80,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing building to be rehabilitated into Class A office space within six months.
Opened: 2002
Employees: Nearly 200
Overview: $13 million project for the Global Operations Center for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP, an international law firm. Redeveloped a 100-year-old industrial building of 88,000 square feet into modern offices and state-of-the-art technology center. The GOC serves as the Help Desk, accounts receivable, and human resource departments for all Orrick’s offices worldwide.
Orrick performed a nationwide search for their facility location and chose Wheeling. The project team consisted of many local partners who pulled together to get this $13 million project accomplished in under a year (from making the decision through construction to opening their doors). The Regional Economic Development Partnership was the conduit to making this project a reality.
“At Orrick, we now have the ability to connect everyone globally 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through the technology in Wheeling. That technology is reliable because of the people here. With the lower costs, advanced technology, and loyal skilled workers, Orrick is saving over $5 million per year, and customer satisfaction is at its highest.” – Ralph Baxter, President and CEO of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP
Excerpts From an Article By Zusha Elinson
The Recorder 05-25-2007
– When Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe announced it would move scores of support staff to a small industrial town in West Virginia, lawyers inside and out were skeptical of the quality of work and the
return on investment.
Five years later, the 980-lawyer firm says it has saved more than $20 million thanks to the Global Operations Center in Wheeling, West Virginia–all without diminishing its services.
“Any time you have every level of government, every level of economic development authority helping you establish yourself as a viable corporate entity, it can’t get much easier,” said Will Turani, director of the center in Wheeling, stressing that Orrick’s presence has brought jobs to the region and encouraged other businesses to open similar facilities in the area.
– “It has established greater efficiency and process excellence than we could’ve expected,” said firm chairman and CEO Ralph Baxter, Jr. “It’s been a substantial contribution to the economics.”
In large part, that’s because of the low cost of real estate and wages in West Virginia. Occupancy costs are $1,700 per person in Wheeling, according to the firm, as opposed to $8,550 in San Francisco or nearly twice that in midtown Manhattan, according to a study by DTZ Research. The average salary is about $45,000 at the center, which the firm estimates is about 30 percent less than it would be paying in most major metropolitan areas.