Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest

Another headquarters move making Boise the location of another division of a corporation: The purchase of Washington Group International (formerly, roughly, Morrison-Knudsen) by URS Corporation of San Francisco, for $2.6 billion.

URS describes itself as “the largest global engineering design firm and a leading U.S. federal government contractor”. It has said there’s little overlap between itself and Washington Group (URS is apparently much more heavily invested in Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security projects), but presumably there’s not a lot of distance either between their operations. One statement said “there may be some duplication in corporate operations such as in the two companies information technology departments, but he said they company hasn’t yet identified where any additional duplication may be occurring.” Boiseans may want to watch that territory closely.

Washington Group’s CEO, Steve Hanks, was quoted as saying that “the sale isn’t expected to have much of an impact on the company’s Boise headquarters.” Maybe. Headquarters for what has been WGI are slated to remain in Boise, at least for now.

But so, Boiseans might bear in mind, are some of the central offices for what remains of Albertsons.