Parsons’ new delivery model is its connective tissue

Basic principle of the business thesis of Parsons Corp. is to help the federal government and critical infrastructure customers bring together their digital and physical worlds through modern technology.

Which led the company to launch Parsons X, a new and more centralized delivery model for deploying digital offerings in mission areas that the team sees converging.

Part of the drive to create and unveil Parsons X is in response to a market that is attracting industry for more solutions spanning both corporate segments, said Peter Torrelas, president of Parsons’ connected communities business unit.

“Naturally, organically: I think the teams are really collaborating and figuring out how to do this together,” Torrelas told me. “We saw a really great opportunity to stimulate all the opportunities we had with what the market wanted, so that we could be in a better position to provide these opportunities efficiently and effectively to the market.”

Parsons X is designed as a digital accelerator to further assist in the development and implementation of solutions for cybersecurity, data federation, artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital twins that replicate physical assets in a three-dimensional visual model.

While Parsons X is within the entire organization, the first innovation center will be located in the Paladin Lab’s laboratory at the Aberdeen Army Range in Maryland.

The 9,000-square-foot center aims to give Parsons, customers and partners in industry and academia a sandy environment to build and evaluate potential solutions before entering the field.

One aspect of having such a facility is the oft-spoken phrases “rapid failure” and “failure ahead”, which include how learning what works and doesn’t work is necessary for innovation.

Torrelas said that in order to fail quickly, a safe space for experimentation and cooperation is needed. Which ensures that the meeting of physical infrastructure and digital “is not a clash”, but rather a joint one, he added.

Both Paladin’s location and the Parsons X ecosystem also aim to help the company keep asking questions along the way, according to Torrellas.

“The real key is to create the connective tissue between innovation and research and how we actually deliver it,” Torrelas said. “That’s why we created Parsons X so that you have something organizational that can create the connective tissue between the innovation pipeline and providing and creating value for our customers.”

(A future episode of Project 38 will have more than a full conversation with Torrellas, who has more on Parsons X, but begins by explaining how Parsons defines “connected communities.” Torrellas also describes Parsons’ approach to facilitating cooperation and synergies between its federal partners). and critical infrastructure segments.)