Company assists in crisis while luring tech tenants

Stan Kuzia sees Global Emergency Resources as the anchor tenant at the National Science Center Foundation campus near Fort Gordon.

For the first time since the foundation envisioned the park in the 1980s, there's a tech-based company operating in it. And since the emergency preparedness software company moved into the vacant foundation building on Craig-Sims Parkway, there has been interest from at least two more technology companies.

Mr. Kuzia's company has been in the old Fort Discovery building for the past six months, assisting the foundation with its modernization. Over the next year, he will be trying to raise money to turn the second floor into a state-of-the-art training facility - a place where clients can run tabletop emergency exercises or military personnel can gather for meetings.

"We need to operate our business first, along the way try to raise funds for the National Science Center to finish this out. We're a tenant that's interested in improving the conditions," said Mr. Kuzia.

During the day, the 18 employees write and market software that hospitals, cruise lines or state health departments would use to manage a crisis. It is the brain child of Mr. Kuzia, a former Smith Barney employee, and Kevin Orr, a former public information officer and helicopter pilot.

Three years ago, Global started in a small office on Davis Road.

The rebirth of the technology park came when they needed a building with more space and the foundation needed a tenant. The only people occupying the 22,000-square-foot building since Fort Discovery moved to downtown Augusta were foundation staffers. It is the only building on the 88-acre campus near Gate 1.

"This is such a parklike environment out here. We have deer and wild turkey," said Mr. Orr, who is Global's chief operating officer.

Mr. Kuzia said part of promoting the campus involves showing people that it exists, doing that through their presence. "We've already had people approach us wanting to build something out here."

Global fits the bill in the kinds of businesses - science and technology - the foundation wants at the campus.

HC Standard is the name of the software. It gives real time information to a decision maker running an exercise or involved in an actual crisis.

"It can track just about anything, surge capacity, beds, blood supply," Mr. Kuzia said.

In the event of a mass casualty accident or a natural disaster, it could be used to track patients at a number of hospitals.

"There's no scope of a disaster that this couldn't apply to," Mr. Orr said. "We've seen some interest from several schools in the wake of the Virginia Tech incident."

The schools would want to know how to evacuate a campus, track the buses and know where each student went.

Mr. Kuzia said the company's first customers were Colorado and Delaware.

Since Katrina, states and regions have been putting money into preparedness. The last such disaster locally was the chlorine release that killed nine people after a train derailment in Graniteville in January 2005.

The former president of Avondale Mills, which closed a year after that accident, has joined the Global team, as well as personnel from the FBI and Savannah River Site.

In order to transform the second floor into the training facility, Mr. Kuzia said, he'll approach community leaders and offer naming rights for the center in exchange for starting the fundraising efforts.

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com