A rendering of Viewpoint Construction Software's new offices, across the street from its headquarters near OMSI. Viewpoint hopes to move in next year, following a $20 million rehabilitation by Killian Pacific, Viewpoint and building owner Portland General Electric.

(Courtesy Viewpoint Construction Software)

Business

: Project management and operational support software for contractors.

Founded

: The business dates to 1976; current management has been running it since 1990. (Viewpoint sometimes goes by the name of its holding company, Coaxis.)

Revenues

: $59.2 million in 2012, up 48 percent. Viewpoint projects revenue between $90 million and $100 million this year.

Ownership

: Privately held. The family of Viewpoint CEO Jay Haladay holds a "sizable" share of the business. Private equity firm TA Associates invested $76 million in the business last year.

Employees

: 450, including 250 at its Portland headquarters, with the rest scattered across regional offices and acquired companies.

Viewpoint Construction Software is the biggest Portland tech company you've never heard of.



Despite having 450 employees and revenues approaching $100 million a year, Viewpoint has been relatively anonymous in its home city. That may be because its software -- administrative and operational tools for contractors -- has little resonance beyond its core industry.



Yet Viewpoint's time in obscurity may be ending.



The company announced this morning that it will expand into a 60,000-square-foot building across the street from its headquarters at the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge. The $20 million renovation project will more than double Viewpoint's footprint and make room to expand beyond the 250 who work there now.



Moreover, Viewpoint says it's contemplating an initial public offering as early as next year -- potentially the first Oregon tech IPO in a decade. It would be an enormous milestone for the state as the tech sector continues its rebound from a long, debilitating slumber.



Viewpoint hasn't decided yet whether to pursue an IPO, which growing companies use to pay off investors and fund future growth. But Viewpoint President Jim Paulson said it's a strong possibility.



"It's quite an exciting time for us," Paulson said. "We've created some options for ourselves."





Many of those clients are in town this week; Viewpoint is hosting 1,000 people in Portland for its annual user conference.

The new office is in a 1909 building across Southeast Water Avenue from Viewpoint's headquarters, near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Portland General Electric built it as a railroad terminal and warehouse and has used it as horse stable, office and even an in-house museum, according to Noel Johnson, vice president of Killian Pacific. The Vancouver developer is buying the building and will renovate it, then lease it to Viewpoint. PGE occupied the building until about a year ago, using it as an office and maintenance hub.

The $20 million overall includes an environmental cleanup by PGE, renovation by Killian Pacific and tenant improvements by Viewpoint, which hopes to move in sometime next summer. Viewpoint's software developers will occupy the new space; its executive team and administrative staff will remain in the current office.

"I think it'll be a dynamo project, a catalyst for the central eastside and the job growth that is going on there," Johnson said.

Viewpoint hoped to install a sky bridge over Water Avenue to connect its two buildings but couldn't overcome city permitting restrictions, according to Paulson. Instead, the company will explore the possibility of connecting both buildings to the Hawthorne Bridge's eastbound pedestrian walkway.

Going public

Some Silicon Forest tech IPOs (and the amount each company raised)

1963

: Tektronix: $10 million

1978

: Floating Point Systems: $9.5 million

1983

: Electro Scientific Industries: $18 million

1984

: Mentor Graphics: $55 million

1987

: Sequent Computer Systems: $29 million

1989

: Lattice Semiconductor: $14 million

1990

: InFocus: $24 million

1993

: Planar Systems: $21 million

1995

: FEI Co.: $21 million

1995

: RadiSys: $20 million

1997

: Electric Lightwave Inc. (Vancouver), $128 million

1999

: WebTrends: $46 million, Digimarc: $84 million

2000

: Pixelworks: $58 million, Corillian, $32 million

2004

: Cascade Microtech: $74.2 million

Source: Regulatory filings, Oregonian research

Eastside redevelopment has been a priority for the city and its urban renewal agency, the Portland Development Commission. Patrick Quinton, the PDC's director, said his agency has provided guidance for the project, which will likely qualify for yet-to-be determined enterprise zone property tax breaks.



Portland's most prominent tech companies are clustered downtown or in the Pearl District, but as startups grow into big businesses they're having an increasingly difficult time finding offices big enough to accommodate their growing workforces. Quinton said the eastside could provide a new outlet.



"Even if we could whip up new buildings," he said, "there's just not a lot of room in the Pearl for it to happen."



For many years, Viewpoint was primarily owned by the family of chief executive Jay Haladay. Last year it took a $76 million investment from a Massachusetts private equity firm called TA Associates. Viewpoint has also made a series of small acquisitions, expanding its products and geographic reach.



An IPO can raise money and a company's profile, but it also imposes new regulatory requirements and brings intense public scrutiny.



A rule-of-thumb among corporate financiers is that companies shouldn't go public before revenues hit $100 million, and even then they need to show strong growth before pursuing that route. Portland network security company Tripwire planned an IPO in 2011, but dropped that plan when its growth rate slowed.



Plenty of larger companies have run into trouble in the public markets, overwhelmed by regulatory barriers or investors' pressures. Facebook's hotly anticipated IPO last year became a major disappointment when the stock fell sharply in the days and weeks after its debut.



Viewpoint is in the early stages of weighing the possibility, according to Paulson. But he said investment banks are actively courting Viewpoint and that Viewpoint will consider it late next year or early in 2015.



"We've certainly put ourselves in a position to be able to do something, should we choose to do so," Paulson said.



The 10-year drought of Oregon IPOs reflect the damage the state's tech sector suffered in the years following the dot-com bust and during the Great Recession, when tech employment plunged and corporate fortunes faded.



Today, though, there's a thriving startup community in the city and big companies such as Intel, Salesforce.com, eBay and others are expanding their Oregon outposts. The tech sector accounts for 10 percent of the state's job gains since the recession, according to a recent analysis by the Oregon Employment Department.



A number of Portland tech startups are getting national attention, among them Puppet Labs, Urban Airship and Elemental Technology, whose products range from data center manage to mobile apps to video encoding software. But all those companies are still relatively young.



Skip Newberry, president of the Technology Association of Oregon, said a Viewpoint IPO would have enormous symbolic significance. It could raise the entire region's profile, he said, and make Portland a more attractive place to start and grow a company.



"In order to really tip the scale and get top-notch executive talent here," Newberry said, "we need to demonstrate that anything is possible here in Portland."





-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; phone: 503-294-7699