Photo courtesy of Systems Planning & Analysis
A SPA ID card is swiped in Alexandria.
One of Alexandria's biggest private employers has turned a chunk of its headquarters into a lab — not the beakers-and-lab-coats kind, but a secure, 14,400-square-foot space where analysts pull apart some of the hardest problems in national defense.
Systems Planning & Analysis, known around town as SPA, has opened what it calls the Advanced Analytics Lab inside its headquarters at 2001 N. Beauregard St. in Alexandria's West End. The company works for government clients on defense and intelligence programs, and the new lab is where its people bring data, modeling software and subject-matter expertise into one room.
It's also cleared at the Secret level — a government classification tier one step below Top Secret — which is a polite way of saying the public is likely never getting a tour.
The lab is the latest piece of an expansion Alexandria has been watching since September 2025, when SPA bought its 239,000-square-foot headquarters building and announced plans to renovate it and grow its Northern Virginia operations. The analytics lab is part of what that money bought.
Photo courtesy of Systems Planning & Analysis
Rich Sawchak, CEO of Systems Planning & Analysis
"Our expansion was an investment in more than our physical footprint," said Rich Sawchak, SPA's chief executive officer, in the company's announcement. "We committed to giving our people the technology, resources, and environment to advance our clients' most important missions."
What actually happens in there
SPA analysts use the space daily, and the work spans a lot of ground: missile defense, cyber and information warfare, maritime and undersea programs, space and intelligence, and homeland defense. Teams run simulations, test out different courses of action and evaluate the technical and budget tradeoffs that come with big defense acquisitions.
Part of the pitch is that clients can come sit in the room. Instead of receiving a finished report weeks later, government customers can watch an analysis unfold and weigh in while it's happening.
The lab also gives SPA a place to run its own proprietary tools — products with names like GCAM, ArcherEye and AthenaSight — alongside the government and commercial modeling software the industry already uses.
"SPA's role as a trusted agent to our government clients is grounded in the extensive expertise and judgment our people bring to complex mission challenges," said Mark Adams, the company's chief capability officer. "The Advanced Analytics Lab gives those experts an environment to work differently."
The local footprint
SPA employs more than 3,000 people worldwide and has been named a WTOP Top Workplace every year since 2014. It's also a seven-time recipient of the U.S. Department of Labor's HIRE Vets Gold Medallion Award, which recognizes employers that hire and retain veterans. The company is owned by Arlington Capital Partners, a Chevy Chase-based private equity firm focused on government and aerospace businesses.
The company says it plans to keep building out the lab, and that it's hiring across the region — engineering, analytics, technical and business roles — though a spokesperson declined to tie any specific openings to the new lab. Current listings are searchable by location on the company's careers page: https://spa.com/careers/.
