There’s nothing like a move to make one reflect on life’s milestones. Especially when that move is back to a place you’ve been before. That’s the situation I find myself in now as we prepare to move our Boston office from the Prudential Tower back to the John Hancock Tower, the building in which NeuCo was founded and located until our move almost three years ago.

It was in the Hancock Tower that I made the move from Charles River Associates (CRA), NeuCo’s majority investor, to become one of the founding members of NeuCo. I worked for 16 years in the Hancock Tower, and in the 10 of those years dedicated to NeuCo, I saw the company grow from an idea to become the leading provider of power plant combustion optimization solutions.

Our initial location in the Hancock Tower was mostly opportunistic.  With CRA instrumental to the launch of the company and being a majority owner, it made sense as a fledgling start-up to rent space from them, where we could also leverage the IT systems, payroll processing, and other pieces of infrastructure.  Even after NeuCo had established itself and was no longer reliant on CRA’s infrastructure, CRA’s great lease terms with owners of the Hancock Tower kept us put.   

Alas, the ownership of the Hancock Tower changed and both CRA and NeuCo were expanding, so in early 2007 we had choices to make about our next location. Fortunately, NeuCo was able to find a great new location to sublease at a great rate on the 30th floor of the Prudential Tower. Located just 3 blocks from our previous location, it also offered the urban amenities of Boston’s Back Bay, easy access to the airport and public transportation routes, and a view that made both employees and customers happy. 

Our stint at the Pru was a good one – despite the dated office interior and our inability to enter or exit the office without walking through a shopping center. But here we are 3 years later at the end of our sublease and moving back to the Hancock Tower again. Despite the fact that moving is always a pain, I can’t help but be excited.  Not only is it a good business move -- with better rates and more flexibility to accommodate our next round of growth – I’m also excited about the nice perks such as contemporary interior design, floor to ceiling windows, the best views of downtown Boston and the Public Gardens, and the lack of mall traffic .

Another big part of my excitement is the marker the move provides. Moving back in space emphasizes how far NeuCo has advanced over time.  When I last stared out of the windows from Floor 31 in the Hancock Tower, NeuCo had just recently acquired Pegasus Technologies and was starting the process of integrating people, technologies and processes.  We were in the midst of our first DOE CCPI project and were just kicking off the CCPI Limestone project. We had just launched three new products but they were not fully commercialized. And optimization software was considered by the industry to be just about NOx control.

On December 14, when I peer through my new office windows, the view will be different -- and not just because of the additional clarity from being 5 floors lower.  I will be looking through the eyes of one who has seen:

• The successful integration of companies and technologies;
• The completion of (almost) two CCPI projects which resulted in tremendous advancements to the state of the art;
• The proven value of 4 integrated optimization products – across not just one unit but entire generating fleets;
• The creation of a real-time optimization platform capable of addressing the full range of availability, emissions control, and efficiency  improvement opportunities across a wide range of generating plants;
• A slew of new customers – who no longer ask “what is it” but “show me how it can help me”; and
• The redefinition of the optimization category from an interesting new technology with lots of potential to a set of proven tools and technologies essential for getting the most out of our crucially important existing fossil generation fleet.

So, I and the rest of the NeuCo team have many reasons to be excited about this next locational chapter in NeuCo's history. We hope you can come by and visit our new digs with the following address:

NeuCo, Inc.
200 Clarendon Street
John Hancock Tower, T-26
Boston, MA 02116

I’ll leave you with a final personal (and somewhat smug) reflection:  early in NeuCo's life, when people would ask about the company’s future locational prospects, I would joke that it didn't matter to me as long as it was less than 3 miles from my house and afforded a great view of the city.  Remarkably, my jokingly stated but sincere preferences have not only been met over the entirety of NeuCo's history; it appears there is no end in sight!