Business

After a nearly two-year search, the consortium tapped to spearhead an ambitious toll lanes project in Montgomery County has found itself a construction partner. AM Partners, a conglomerate led by Transurban, announced on Wednesday that it has taken on Los Angeles-based Tutor Perini to design and build toll lanes along portions of the Capital Beltway and I-270. The project is a top priority for Gov. Larry Hogan (R), though it has roused opposition locally. Early last year, the Transurban group outbid two other conglomerates, despite the loss of its original construction partner, Archer Western, which separated from AM Partners for reasons that have never been made public.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit small business owners hard, forcing virtually every business to explore new ways to reach their customers. For many, the challenges to keep the lights on led to some surprising results. The term “pivot” emerged as a buzzword to describe how businesses were changing the way they operated. Some of those changes were so impactful, they have become permanent fixtures. Here’s how two Maryland companies incorporated their pivot into daily operations.

CFG Bank has agreed to move its offices into 100,000 square feet at Port Covington, becoming the first office tenant in the massive South Baltimore development. Jack Dwyer, owner of the local bank, confirmed to the Baltimore Business Journal Wednesday that the company will relocate to the 235-acre, $5.5 billion development. The news was first reported by the Baltimore Banner. “It’s a great property and we’re happy to be the pioneers moving in,” Dwyer said.

Reading Partners Baltimore is looking for 600 community volunteers for its individualized tutoring program, which is set to resume in person this fall for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The national nonprofit organization, which plans to launch the program at 14 Baltimore city schools in coming weeks, provides students in under-resourced schools with one-on-one reading support to help them reach grade level by fourth grade, according to a news release Wednesday.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Wednesday announced it has received a grant of nearly $120,000 from the Maryland Department of Labor to expand its Registered Apprenticeship for Finance Business Partners in the state. The funds from the grant will cover instruction-related costs for a minimum of 25 new apprentices. Through the state’s Apprenticeship and Training Program, more than 12,000 apprentices are registered to be trained in new job skills with 3,879 employers across the state.

Montgomery County life sciences firm MaxCyte Inc. is settling into a new headquarters and ramping up manufacturing and hiring, following a massive overhaul of the space to accommodate increasing demand and a growing headcount. The company, which markets a cell-engineering platform for pharmaceutical companies developing new drugs and therapies, now occupies its new home at 9713 Key West Avenue in Rockville — a 10-minute drive southeast of its former space at 21 and 22 Firstfield Road in Gaithersburg

Entrepreneurs take great pride in building a business from scratch, developing financial security, and planning for the future. For Ian Mulira, however, success is about something more. “It allows me to sleep at night, which was tough for the first eight years or so,” he said with a smile. An electrical engineer by trade, Mulira was working for the U.S. Department of Defense as a civilian contractor during the early 2000s. His specialty was building automation systems (known in the trade as BAS), which connect and automate building functions from heating and air conditioning to fire and security systems. “I loved what I was doing,” he recalled in a recent interview in the Greenbelt office of his company, Conquest Solutions.

The Small Business Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation have formalized several new agreements to help underserved businesses win federal contracts and access potential funding. The new memorandums of understanding were announced Tuesday at a business forum at DOT headquarters in Washington, D.C., as part of a push to include more small-business owners in the contracts coming from the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed by President Biden in 2021, as well as opportunities from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.