Adesta opens Houston office

OMAHA, Neb.--Adesta, an integration firm operating in communications and electronic security, has opened a new office in Houston, Texas, working under the Central Security Group. It is the company's sixth regional office focusing on security. Considering expansions in Houston this year by Safeguard and Infrastruct, it might seem the Houston security market is rapidly growing, but Adesta president Bob Sommerfeld said the new Adesta office won't focus on Houston's growing commercial market. Rather, it gives the company a regional location to serve an existing port and a port facilities customer base that reaches throughout the Gulf Coast, from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Mobile, Ala. Sommerfeld said that any growth in the area would likely come from "developing infrastructure protection projects for what we call port industries: petroleum facilities, terminal facilities that are either part of a port or within a port boundary ... anything involved with some kind of intermodal transportation." Also, Adesta is expanding on some petrochemical and dam-protection work into energy facilities and wastewater treatment plants, building off strengths in perimeter protection, access control and intrusion detection. "Traditionally, there have been city and community-based jobs in these areas," said Sommerfeld, "but there are starting to be larger jobs," thanks to an infusion of Department of Homeland Security money. Sommerfeld plans to use a similar model to open more regional offices in the near future. Adesta will try "to develop enough anchor-type business in a geographic region, and then establish a permanent presence to service those customers." In other Adesta news, the company has hired former Convergint Technologies vice president of business development Rob Hile as Adesta vice president of business development, to head a new approach to the federal market. "It will be a more strategic and expanded focus as it relates to the broader federal market," Sommerfeld said. "I think you're going to see defense contracting and security contracting get blended more and more. It already has actually, but you can't quite see it or touch it yet."