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MARTINSBURG - When Harry M. Siegel started HMS Technologies Inc. in late 2003, he knew he could bring in business by providing top-flight computer hardware and software along with high-tech problem-solving processes.
He also knew he wanted a different feel for his company - highly professional but in no way a typical corporate America operation.
Six years in, the business the South Carolina native launched from his basement has wrapped up more than $200 million in projects, with millions more in the pipeline. Just last month, the company announced it had landed another in a string of federal contracts, this one a five-year, blanket purchase order worth at least $500,000 from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and National Weather Service to provide cost-estimating services.
Another recent contract is even bigger - a $75 million effort to create plans for continuity of operations to all of Health and Human Services organizations, such as the NIH, FDA and CDC in the event of a natural disaster or a cataclysmic event, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
New contracts will mean a bigger footprint for HMS, which already has outgrown two homes - first Siegel's basement in northern Berkeley County and then an office in downtown Martinsburg.
Eighteen months ago, HMS moved into a breathtaking, converted barn dating to 1705. Located just outside of the city, the vast stone structure - once used as a TV news studio and more recently as a church - includes some 14,000 square feet of space, but work is under way to reconfigure the building's one-time auditorium and large conference room into more than 20 executive offices and work stations.
Siegel said further growth will mean constructing a new building on the six-acre site, a move that's likely only three years off, he predicts.
From the moment a visitor gets buzzed into HMS's secure headquarters inside the massive stone barn less than a mile from Interstate 81, it's clear Siegel has kept good on his promise to create a work atmosphere that's unusually warm. In the long hallway adjacent to the headquarters' foyer, an orange kitten named Garfield frolics before darting into the office of media affairs director Cassandra A. White.
"We rescued Garfield and Oreo from the Humane...