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HADCO Maintains Only AEDO-Certified Program in the State of West Virginia
The Huntington Area Development Council engages in economic development for Cabell and Wayne counties on many fronts. However, the organization’s Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) Program is the main vehicle to deliver resources to the existing business community. BRE is the industry-standard term for a local economic development organization’s program to keep and promote existing businesses and private sector investment. BRE should be viewed as the focal point of most local economic development programs. HADCO manages a very robust program, averaging more than 120 business visits per year and maintaining the only AEDO-Certified program in the State of West Virginia.
HADCO’s BRE program is centered around three distinct objectives; building relationships with companies in the local market, delivering resources to area companies and expanding their capacity to make investments and create jobs, and finally supporting expansion projects that lead to investment and job creation.
Relationship building is key to the success of HADCO’s BRE program. The first step in this process is building an understanding of who the company is, what it produces, and how it fits into the broader market and regional supply chain. Once this is understood, the HADCO team can begin to uncover potential challenges and opportunities and guide the company to meaningful programs and resources.
HADCO leverages strategic partnerships with many local and state agencies to provide direct resources to companies. These include workforce training and funding programs, talent retention and attractions programs, shared manufacturing and design-engineering resources, export promotion and marketing programs, government contract assistance, business to business promotions, supplier solutions, and eventually tax credit and public finance programs, infrastructure grants, and building and site location services. Together these represent most of the programs and resources that can be leveraged to help a company become more profitable and create new jobs and investment in the area.
A related component to HADCO’s BRE program is the promotion of success stories and the use of local information and metrics to attract new businesses that are complementary to the market. Complementary business attraction is focused on attracting industry sector targets that make use of and contribute to the area’s unique industry mix, local talent pool, infrastructure, and natural and geographic resources. One of our attraction efforts’ main goals is to attract companies that contribute to the regional supply chain. Businesses who locate in the area should find ample partnerships to either supply or buy from existing companies. In many ways, our existing industry sectors’ success is the main attraction tool for our area.
HADCO was recognized as the longest-tenured Accredited Economic Development Organization (AEDO) in the country at this year’s International Economic Development Council (IEDC) Annual Conference. The AEDO certification acts as a quality standard, showcasing the organization’s commitment to industry standards and excellence in operations, structure, and procedures. One of the major elements of the recertification audit completed in 2020 was the organization’s BRE program. The 2020 recertification of HADCO as an AEDO-Certified organization validates all of the organization’s programmatic efforts, including the BRE program, because engagement with community stakeholders is such an important part of the certification criteria. With this certification area, companies can rest assured that when they meet and work with HADCO, they are represented by a best-in-class organization part of an elite network of organizations in the industry.