Company to add 100 jobs at Blythewood site

Computer Sciences last February also planned expansion for 300 employees

By JIM DuPLESSIS - jduplessis@thestate.com

Computer Sciences Corp. will add another 100 programmers and other professionals at its Blythewood campus, in addition to a 300-employee expansion announced in February, the site’s manager said Friday.

The two expansions will raise the site’s employment to 1,400, up from a low of 800 in 2002 but still below its peak of 2,500 in 1998.

Ray August, president of CSC’s property and casualty division based at Blythewood, said the workers will be hired “as soon as we can find them.”

They will support CSC’s core business at the site — developing programs that help insurers process claims more efficiently.

In February, CSC said it would hire 300 workers for Blythewood as it seeks outsourcing contracts from defense and aerospace suppliers that are restricted from taking the work abroad, but want the cost-savings from the Columbia area’s lower wages for technical jobs than those paid on the West Coast and in the Northeast.

Area wages for computer professionals are about 20 percent less than the U.S. average.

Mary Jo Morris, president of CSC’s World Sourcing Services, which will oversee the 300-employee unit, said Blythewood was chosen to use CSC’s 456,000 square feet of offices more fully.

“We found this area in South Carolina to be very advantageous,” she said. “Not only do we find skills, but we find them at an economic wage.”

Customers will include General Dynamics, Raytheon, United Technologies and Boeing.

World Sourcing, based at CSC’s offices in Falls Church, Va., will set up two other 300-employee domestic outsourcing centers in the Midwest within two years, she said.

Computer Sciences acquired the site in 2000 when it bought Mynd Corp. The company was renamed earlier that year from Policy Management Systems, which was founded in Columbia in 1974.