ICF International

Our first president was Clarence “Lucky” Lester, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. He earned his nickname after flying more than 90 missions without being hit. He also downed three enemy aircraft in less than six minutes. Outside the military, “Lucky” was known as “Les” by friends and family. He was a passionate photographer and had an affinity for fast cars.

In 1969 Lucky partnered with Donald “Don” Ogilvie, Herbert S. “Pug” Winokur Jr., and Bruce Caputo — the four individuals knew one another from business school and from working at the Pentagon — to establish the Inner City Fund. Our founders, who did not take any outside funding to start the company, sought to finance minority-owned businesses in the nation’s capital. In 1972 we diversified and went into consulting, changed our name to ICF Incorporated, and became a well-respected advisor to a number of U.S. federal agencies.

Some of our early clients included the National Security Council, the Office of Child Development, the National Academy of Sciences, the Federal Maritime Commission, and the District of Columbia Public Schools system. By the mid-1970s, our founders were less involved in the business, pursuing other passions and career ventures. According to co-founder Bruce Caputo, they had no idea how big ICF would become.

During the 1970s U.S. federal agencies ramped up their regulatory activity — including at the newly created Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established in 1970, and the Department of Energy (DoE) which was established in 1977. We partnered with these agencies early on to help drive results in energy, climate, and the environment. Other early clients included the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (with functions now found in Department of Health and Human Services as well as Education); the U.S. Department of Labor; the U.S. Department of Transportation; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); and The White House. While U.S. federal, state, and local governments comprised most of our client base during these years, we performed about 10 percent of our work for the private sector.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s we took on more ambitious projects as our expertise and capabilities grew, specifically in energy modeling and forecasting. In 1977 we worked with the Federal Energy Administration (FEA) and the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) – both eventually merged under the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) – to help develop the Coal and Electric Utilities Model (CEUM), a policy planning tool that projects future energy use by fuel type. Around the same time we created supply and demand forecasting models for U.S. natural gas markets (initially as Energy and Environmental Analysis, Inc. (EEA) later acquired by ICF) that were formalized in 1997 as the Gas Market Model (GMM). At the time, it was believed the U.S. was running out of natural gas, and the Fuel Use Act of 1978 prohibited the use of natural gas as a fuel for electric power plants. The CEUM and GMM preceded the Integrated Planning Model (IPM), which launched 10 years later. We also did much of the analytical and policy-related work that supported early implementation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980. Informally called Superfund, CERCLA gives EPA the funds and authority to clean up contaminated sites that pose risks to human health and the environment.

In 1984 we partnered with USAID to implement the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program (initially as Macro International, Inc., later acquired by ICF), our longest-held continuous contract. Over the last 35 years, working in 90 countries, we have collected, analyzed, and disseminated critical data on important health topics such as fertility, family planning, maternal and child health, gender and domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition, and environmental health. Health and government officials use the survey data to make important decisions to improve the overall health and economic status of populations in developing countries.

Also in 1984 under contract with the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, we estimated the economic losses to Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Additionally, in conjunction with the EPA, we published the groundbreaking book Greenhouse Effect and Sea Level Rise: A Challenge for this Generation, that was decades ahead of its time in its investigation of the potentially catastrophic implications of the “greenhouse effect” and the impact of global warming on sea levels.

We expanded our portfolio (and our team) in the 1980s and 1990s, performing exciting work for the U.S. government and the private sector. In 1985 we founded our housing division, providing technical assistance, training, and research for rental and homeownership affordable housing programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We earned our first million-dollar technical assistance contract with HUD in 1989 which led to decades of work at the local, state, and federal levels supporting some of the nation’s important housing and community development issues. What started as a one-person team with a small revenue stream quickly grew to a significant practice and one of our core offerings. The work we started in the 1980s planted the seeds for the robust community development and disaster recovery work we continue today.

We outgrew our offices in downtown Washington, D.C. and relocated to our existing headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital, in 1987. We continued to accelerate our climate, energy, and environment work while expanding our work in health and human services in the public sector. During this time we began to build on our advisory services with program management and implementation work that grew rapidly throughout the decade.

In 1987 we developed the first Integrated Planning Model (IPM) of the North American power, fuels, and environmental markets. IPM – built on the modeling work we did in the prior decade – created a common analytical platform used by both the U.S. government and the power sector to analyze various policy scenarios associated with the U.S. Clean Air Act amendments. In the mid 1980s we developed a model that integrated scientific estimates of the effects of ozone depletion on agriculture and human health with estimates of the benefits and costs of reducing ozone emissions. This analysis was used by the EPA in its work on the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, a global agreement across all United Nations (UN) members to protect the stratospheric ozone layer by ending the production and use of ozone-depleting substances. Some of the support for this work included training and technical assistance in Latin America and China, demonstrating our early international focus.

Two years later we worked with the EPA to create the first-ever U.S. national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory to help inform climate change policy, an index that we continue to compile today. Around the same time, we acquired Lewin and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in health care and energy issues. In 1988 we acquired Kaiser Engineers. This allowed us to provide implementation support — primarily for large engineering and construction projects — associated with our existing work in energy and environment. A new company called ICF Kaiser was formed and the consulting business became one of three divisions within the parent company. In 1989 ICF Kaiser went public.

But it wasn’t all about climate and energy; we also expanded our scope in health and human services during this time. In 1990 ICF began operating and managing the Child Welfare Information Gateway (initially as Caliber Associates, later acquired by ICF), an online library with hundreds of thousands of resources dedicated to protecting children and strengthening families. In 1990 we also implemented The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) (initially as Macro International, Inc., later acquired by ICF), a powerful tool for targeting and building health promotion activities across the nation, on behalf of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).