U.S. economic conditions remain in the doldrums, but that hasn't diminished EDCUtah's project pipeline. "In fact, it's fuller than it has ever been," says Vice President of Business Development Todd Brightwell. "We've never been busier with requests for information (RFIs), but companies are being cautious and more deliberate with their due diligence."

The current pattern is "hurry up and wait," he says. Nonetheless, EDCUtah is encouraged by all of the activity and remains hopeful that as the national economy begins to stabilize, much of the project development work in the pipeline will bear fruit. EDCUtah's pipeline currently includes 133 active projects with another 137 projects in various stages of "cold storage," meaning they are on hold for one reason or another, but they still have meaning and potential. Of the active projects, 80 fit within one of the eight economic development clusters established by Governor Jon Huntsman and represent the potential addition of 18,760 jobs for the state. Here's a breakdown of the cluster-related projects:

• Financial Services (4)
• Homeland Security (4)
• Outdoor (5)
• Aerospace (8)
• Life Sciences (9)
• Competitive Accelerators (8)
• IT Software (20)
• Energy (22)

Brightwell says the project development cycle can range from three months to as long as two to three years. It all begins with a basic inquiry or request for information (RFI). Roughly 50 percent of the RFIs received directly by EDCUtah are distributed to communities throughout the state. The other 50 percent are handled internally by EDCUtah for one or two reasons: (1) Utah is already on a short list and the site consultant or company has already narrowed the site search; (2) the sensitivity of the project. "The company may be trying to fly under the radar for various reasons and, therefore, chooses to delay reaching out to communities via the RFI process," Brightwell says.

When an RFI will be distributed statewide, the EDCUtah project manager working the project will coordinate the effort, distributing the RFI throughout the state and then collecting and consolidating the community responses into one cohesive package, which the project manager submits to the company or site selector. "We don't want to inundate a company with multiple RFIs in multiple formats, so we work hard to present a consolidated, unified package containing all of the data from all of the responding communities," says Brightwell.

Some RFIs are received directly by local real estate brokers or community economic developer leaders rather than by EDCUtah. This most commonly occurs when a company or site selector has already settled on a location of interest. In such instances, EDCUtah takes on an auxiliary role, assisting as much or as little as the community requires. For example, Brightwell says the Duncan Aviation project went directly to economic developers in Provo. EDCUtah got involved in the project at Provo's request, providing support to city economic developers. This effort turned into a collaborative, team effort between Provo, EDCUtah and the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED). Another project went directly to Cedar City. EDCUtah's assistance in that project primarily involved connecting the company with GOED to facilitate the incentive process.

"EDCUtah serves a variety of roles -- from 'soup to nuts' to more of an auxiliary role," says Brightwell. "Every project is different, which requires us to remain versatile and quick on our feet." EDCUtah often serves as a facilitator, bringing together the various organizations necessary to complete a project. For example, when state incentives are sought, EDCUtah links with GOED, which manages the state's incentive programs. If a community incentive is sought, EDCUtah's project managers are prepared to assist the responding communities in presenting their local incentive toolkits.

"Our goal is to get the right resources together, such as GOED, real estate brokers, related businesses and communities, and engage them early in every project," Brightwell adds.

A positive response to an RFI generally leads to a site visit, which is the primary milestone in every successful project; however, some projects involve multiple site visits. EDCUtah's goal is to provide site selector and/or company executives with compelling data and resources to encourage as many face to face visits as necessary to win the project. EDCUtah hosted 15 site visits in April and a total of 50 visits since January 1, 2009.

"Bringing company executives and/or site selectors to Utah is crucial to our project development process and generally helps seal a deal," Brightwell says. "Project development is truly a relationship-building process. As we work with the site selectors, corporate real estate executives or other company executives, our objective is to build their trust and show them how doing business in Utah will help them be successful. Site visits help us achieve that objective."

Once the economy stabilizes, Brightwell expects many more projects will move out of the due diligence phase and move forward rapidly.