Modern systemsin buildings that can't be replaced
Preserving the past, building the future
Air handling, fire-life safety, electronic security — the infrastructure a protected building needs to stay open to the public, installed inside fabric nobody is permitted to disturb. Ellis Island. The Smithsonian. The park units of New York Harbor.
Practice
Two decades inside buildings that can't be replaced
Federal preservation work is unforgiving. Drawings are incomplete, the substrate is a century old, the building usually stays in service, and on National Park Service work the standard is the Secretary of the Interior's, not the local code minimum.
The work runs from emergency stabilization on a threatened structure to an $11.7 million mechanical replacement inside a national museum. What connects it is the constraint: new systems, historic fabric, no visible compromise.
Record
Selected awarded work
Grouped by site rather than by size, because that's where the pattern is: most of this is repeat work. The same clients bring us back to the same buildings.
National Museum of the American IndianSmithsonian Institution · New York
Three awards · $18,175,664Ellis Island, Main Immigration BuildingNational Park Service · Statue of Liberty National Monument
Two awards · $3,638,112 +Gateway National Recreation AreaNational Park Service · Brooklyn
One award · $2,427,317Joint Base CharlestonU.S. Air Force · South Carolina
Eleven task orders · $1,022,003Portfolio
Selected preservation projects
The work concentrates hard around New York Harbor. Five of the projects below sit inside Gateway National Recreation Area alone — a single park spread across Brooklyn, Queens and Sandy Hook — and Ellis Island makes six.
New York
Five projects- Floyd Bennett Field, Hangar B roofNational Park Service · Gateway NRABrooklyn
- Floyd Bennett Field, Ryan Visitor CenterNational Park Service · Gateway NRABrooklyn
- Fort Tilden ChapelNational Park Service · Gateway NRAQueens
- Johnson Stadium roof replacementU.S. Army · Military AcademyWest Point
- Manhattan VA Medical CenterDepartment of Veterans AffairsManhattan
New Jersey
Five projects- Fort Hancock gun batteriesNational Park Service · Gateway NRASandy Hook
- Gunnison Beach sand slurryNational Park Service · Gateway NRASandy Hook
- Naval Weapons Station EarleNaval Facilities Engineering CommandColts Neck
- Peter W. Rodino Federal Building — daycareGeneral Services AdministrationNewark
- East Orange VA Medical CenterDepartment of Veterans AffairsEast Orange
Philadelphia & Washington
Three projects- Second Bank of the United States — renovationNational Park Service · Independence NHPPhiladelphia
- Edgar Allan Poe House — roof replacementNational Park ServicePhiladelphia
- Carter G. Woodson Home — emergency stabilizationNational Park ServiceWashington, D.C.
Capabilities
What we self-perform and what we manage
Registered across twenty-one NAICS codes. In practice the work concentrates in three places.
Delivery
- General construction
- Historic preservation
- Restoration & conservation
- Design-build
- Construction management
- Emergency stabilization
Envelope & structure
- Masonry
- Concrete
- Structural steel
- Roofing & siding
- Glass & glazing
- Framing & carpentry
Systems & finishes
- Electrical
- Plumbing & heating
- Fire protection
- Drywall & insulation
- Paint & protective coating
- Tile & flooring
Leadership
Owner-led
The people who make the commitments are the people who see them through.
Harry J. Poppe
Owner · President & Chief Executive
Harry owns RAAD and runs it. Every federal award the company holds carries his name as point of contact, and has for more than a decade — the signature on the contract and the judgement on the site are the same person's.
He runs it on a tradesman's footing. Before the contracts and the vehicles there was a five-year U.S. Department of Labor registered apprenticeship — several thousand supervised hours in the mechanical trades, and the classroom work that goes with them. It's why the parts of a job he watches hardest are the ones that quietly decide the outcome: constructability, value engineering, submittals, change orders.
That structure is deliberate. Historic work punishes distance. The decisions that matter get made at the wall, in front of the condition, and a company where those decisions have to travel up a long chain is a company that gets them wrong slowly. Here they don't have far to travel.
- Position
- Owner, President & Chief Executive
- Background
- Mechanical trades · DOL registered apprenticeship
- Discipline
- Construction management, historic rehabilitation, design-build
Vehicles
Five vehicles. No new competition.
RAAD holds five federal contract vehicles concurrently. An agency covered by any one of them can put us to work as a task order — no solicitation to post, no full competition to run, no award cycle to wait out.
General Note
A-06.1
A contract vehicle is a pre-negotiated agreement that stays open for years. Qualifications, terms and rates are settled once, up front. After that, an agency issues individual task orders against it as requirements arise.
IDIQ — Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity. For continuous need on an unpredictable schedule. MATOC — Multiple Award Task Order Contract, competed among a small pre-qualified pool rather than the open market.
Reference the contract number when initiating a requirement. For scope falling outside these vehicles, we bid open solicitations under NAICS 236220.
Smithsonian Institution construction IDIQ
Construction, renovation and building-system replacement across Smithsonian museums and collections facilities. Our largest body of work sits here — including the $11.7M air handling replacement and the security modernization at the National Museum of the American Indian.
- Contract No.
- F15CC10446
Facility Enhancement & Maintenance IDIQ
Recurring facility repair and improvement across the installation — interior finishes, coatings, signage, flooring and utility system work. Eleven task orders executed to date.
- Contract No.
- FA441823D0003
Design-build construction services MATOC
Design-build delivery at Interior and Forest Service sites. One point of responsibility from concept through closeout, competed among a pre-qualified pool — useful where scope is still forming and design and construction need to move together.
- Contract No.
- 140FGA23D0126
Facilities maintenance & construction IDIQ
Facility maintenance, repair and construction across El Yunque — remote sites, difficult access and a tropical climate that puts building envelopes under constant load.
- Contract No.
- 12445224D0015
Watervliet Arsenal construction MATOC
Construction and repair at an arsenal in continuous operation since 1813 — historic industrial fabric with live manufacturing alongside. The constraint we work in most often, on an unusually demanding site.
- Contract No.
- W911PT20D0017