TechAssist announced today the opening of its new national operations center on February 1, 2008 in Pittsburgh, Penn. The new operations center will be headquartered in 11,000 square feet of the National City Center Building located at 20 Stanwix Street in downtown Pittsburg. The center will house TechAssist’s national network operations, remote-support call center, training facilities and back office functions.TechAssist has been operating a temporary operations center in Pittsburg since the beginning of November while the build out is being completed.

“We’re very excited about the new operations center because it will allow us to deliver a higher level of service to our existing customers and build a solid foundation for expansion of the company,” said TechAssist CEO Nick Vossburg.

Pittsburgh was selected as the location for the national operations center because of its location, the availability of qualified network engineers, cost of real estate and access to excellent educational institutions including Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh as well as economic development incentives offered by the State of Pennsylvania to attract high-tech companies.

TechAssist worked closely with the Allegheny Conference and Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) to put a deal together that would bring as many as 100 new jobs to downtown Pittsburgh over the next three years. The deal included a $100,000 opportunity grant along with training incentives that ultimately made the difference in the decision between Pittsburgh and similar cities.

We looked at a number of cities across the country, and Pittsburgh made the most sense for a lot of reasons,” said Vossburg. “Cost was certainly a factor, but Pittsburgh has so much to offer in terms of quality of life and the quality of the workforce. It was an easy choice for us.”

“I am thrilled to welcome TechAssist to our region,” said Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato. “TechAssist is a perfect example of the high-tech companies that bring skilled, good-paying jobs to Allegheny County. We are proud to be the home of its new Executive Support Operations and look forward to a long, successful future with TechAssist.”

“I am humbled, but not surprised that TechAssist chose Pittsburgh for its expansion,” Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said. “With great sports teams, world-class arts and theatre, and affordability — America’s most livable City offers all of the amenities of a New York, with an intimate, small town feel.”

The new operations center will allow TechAssist to deliver a higher quality of service to clients across the country.

“The vast majority of the work that we perform is done remotely, and being able to bring our remote engineers together in one operations center has clear advantages for us as a company,” said Vossburg. “All of our customers will benefit from our new operations center because it will allow us a deliver a more consistent level of service and greatly improve collaboration among our engineers.”