Scramble On To Ready Intel Site

Ground-breaking for Intel Corp.’s huge research and manufacturing facility, the company’s first new U.S. site in 10 years, is just two weeks away.

At the center of the flurry of permit applications, design plans and personnel decisions is site manager Pat Raburn, 42, of Fresno, Calif., a career Intel worker and the calm in the eye of the storm.

She’s putting in 12-hour days to get the project started on time and its computer-assembly plant open by next summer.

Her second challenge will be making the Intel plant and its 6,000 employees a part of Pierce County.

“We want to be considered a good neighbor - that’s important to us,” Raburn said in an interview with The News Tribune of Tacoma.

“The biggest challenge will be integrating our size into the community” - this town has a pre-Intel population of about 600 - “and traffic issues,” she said.

Raburn says she tries to maintain “a light enough tone so people aren’t stressed out. But I’m serious about getting the job done.”

In 1990, Raburn worked at an Intel microprocessing-chip plant in Livermore, Calif. Raburn was the first to realize Intel planned to shut down the operation, and drew up a plan to save it and its 300 to 400 jobs.

Her effort failed, but Intel found jobs for all the workers dislocated by the closure.

A year ago, she became Intel’s first female site manager, overseeing operations at Intel’s Folsom, Calif., research and development site.

In August, she was tapped for the same post at DuPont, south of Tacoma.

Intel has a reputation for community involvement, for putting its employees and products into local schools. In Folsom, Raburn worked with the Chamber of Commerce and helped bridge the gap between Intel and established small-town businesses, Mayor Bob Holderness said.

“They were giving Pentium chips to the high school, donations to Little League, library and grammar schools. She was supportive of these programs, instead of saying she wanted to put the dollars elsewhere,” Holderness said.