From our roots in the post-WWII infrastructure boom through the U.S. federal government expansion and the digital revolution at the end of the 20th century to our emergence as a cyber-physical leader in the 21st century, M.C. Dean has been in the vanguard of organizations shaping the modern world.
The United States solidified its position as the world’s most prosperous country in the post-war era. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded tenfold in the 1940s and 1950s. Housing became more affordable for returning service members, which fueled a real estate boom. At the same time, government and defense spending doubled as the Cold War began to escalate. Newly-established federal agencies such as the DOD, GSA, FAA, DOT, and NASA started administering large-scale government contracts.
Retired World War II Navy veteran Marion Caleb (M.C.) Dean seized the opportunity to support the region’s economic development, launching an electrical company out of his home in Alexandria, Virginia.
In the 1950s, our early growth was spurred by DC’s postwar boom, supporting the National Capital Region Planning Commission, DOD, and NPS, and top universities.
M.C. Dean secured large-scale federal facilities contracts at Langley, Fort Meade, and Fort Belvior and the region’s major airports throughout the 1960s.
By the 1970s, the company was working on complex, secure laboratory and research facilities for the DOD and major research universities.
At the end of the 20th century, advancements in automation, electronics, computer networks, broadband services, and telecommunications created a more connected world. Increased focus on human impacts on the environment led to new federal legislation—the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Superfund Acts—spurring decades of national cleanup response and removal work for M.C. Dean.
We embarked on larger, more sophisticated projects to support healthier, safer, more secure public and private environments. The growing complexity of our work combined with timely investments in IT and telecommunications powered the company’s trajectory.
Expanding our water and environment expertise in the 1980s, M.C. Dean removed toxic PCB materials from hundreds of government facilities and was the lead systems integrator for Virginia’s largest water treatment plant, keeping water safe and flowing without disruption.
By the 1990s, M.C. Dean expanded its life cycle—design, build, operate & maintain—services to include large-scale infrastructure, including the world’s largest wastewater treatment plant, highly secure government facilities, and overseas DOD projects supporting Operation Desert Storm.
At the end of the century, M.C. Dean led the fiber optics, wireless, telecom, electronic security, and power systems upgrades for most of the region’s major universities, entertainment, and convention centers, and the District’s early intelligent transportation systems.
The dawn of the 21st century forever changed the trajectory of our world. The explosive growth of the internet spurred globalization, communications, and technological advancements at a level of complexity and speed previously unknown. In addition, the 9/11 attacks altered the security position of our nation and triggered massive infrastructure investments both at home and abroad.
Building on our preeminence in power, security, and information systems engineering in the 1990s, M.C. Dean emerged as a cyber-physical leader in this new era.
M.C. Dean launched its OpenBand subsidiary as the first fiber optic, 100-Mbps voice, video, and data service provider in the country. OpenBand’s Glass Mile® offered ‘triple play’ services, plus home security and automation, to more than 5,000 homes.
With the addition of CIM Associates in 2003, M.C. Dean greatly expanded expertise in automation for water infrastructure, electrical power monitoring systems, integrated security applications, mission-critical facility controls, and transit applications.
In the early 2000s, M.C. Dean established operations in Germany focused on OCONUS services for the DOD. The company also expanded domestically to the West and South. By 2020, the company’s operations covered six continents and 49 states.
In 2006, M.C. Dean opened a 255,000-square-foot industrial pre-fabrication facility in Virginia.
By 2021, the firm had more than doubled its manufacturing capacity and expanded its modeling center expertise to manufacture fully integrated and tested complex systems rooms and buildings.
In the mid-2000s, M.C. Dean introduced large-scale testing and pre-commissioning facilities in the U.S. and Europe.
Today, the company operates dozens of labs– from simulation, testing, and pre-commissioning environments to dedicated customer labs certified to meet the government’s most stringent security standards.
In the 2010s, M.C. Dean established preeminence as a designer, manufacturer, integrator, and operator of solutions, supporting the rapid expansion of mission critical and cloud-driven infrastructure.
In the latter part of the decade, we launched solutions for delivering, securing, and managing the lifecycle of critical systems and facilities through our InfraLink™ cloud service offerings.
