PRA Health Sciences ($PRAH) is building up its presence in Pennsylvania, adding 150 jobs with plans to dial up recruitment over the next two years.
The CRO recently consolidated a pair of Pennsylvania sites into an upsized space in Blue Bell, which has become the company's largest global outpost. Now PRA is looking for 150 workers in all of its major divisions, including clinical research.
The $4 million Blue Bell project will create at least 250 jobs by the time it wraps up in 2016, PRA said, and the site is already home to about 1,150 workers.
"We are delighted to be in this beautiful new space and we look forward to welcoming more talented individuals to join our team," said Harris Koffer, President of the Strategic Solutions Group, in a statement. "This new facility is a testament to PRA's continued growth and our commitment to our clients and the surrounding community."
PRA's latest recruitment effort follows the debut of what the company calls its Candidate Experience initiative, a multiplatform effort to identify and recruit qualified nurses, study coordinators and healthcare workers who may thrive as clinical research associates. In July, the CRO unveiled DiscoverYourPra.com, a recruitment portal designed to attract applicants.
Today's expanded PRA came to be thanks to KKR ($KKR), which won a bidding war and picked up the CRO for $1.3 billion in 2013. A few months later, KKR paid an undisclosed sum for ReSearch Pharmaceutical Services and merged its two acquisitions. By year's end, the company had acquired CRI Lifetree to bolster its piecemeal CRO's early-stage capabilities, completing KKR's buy-and-merge plan. PRA went public in a roughly $300 million IPO in late 2014.
- read the statement