Chuck Harrington: Sprints Help Parsons Come Up With Tech Ideas to Fight COVID-19

Chuck Harrington, CEO of Parsons (NYSE: PSN) and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, told the Washington Business Journal in an interview published Monday that running sprints with employees enabled the engineering company to come up with new technology products as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the sprints resulted in the development of a contactless kiosk that checks a person’s temperature, respiratory and heart rates against a possible infection called DetectWise, mobile screening decontamination labs and virtualized traffic management centers.

He also mentioned the company’s work on a diamond-tip sensor to help with the coronavirus detection and the potential deployment of DetectWise to schools and universities.

Harrington discussed Parsons’ efforts to continue to carry out classified work in support of intelligence agency clients during the pandemic.

“In some cases, a fairly large percentage of the work can actually be done in an open environment,” he noted. “So we and our customers worked out methods to do that and in assuring that the last percentage, which varies by the type of task we do, could be done in a [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] with the correct social spacing and appropriate personal protective equipment.”

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