About Us

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CSCI & James Donaghy's history:

CSCI was started in Houston, Texas in 1983 by James Donaghy. The first contract was with Sonny Bono of famed Sonny & Cher. Sonny had opened a 5-star Italian restaurant in the San Felipe Galleria area in Houston. Sonny wanted the new company to perform all of the facility maintenance, repairs & changes to the property so they could focus on the actual restaurant & bar. That success made the business grow quickly with national hospitality brands such as: Marriott Corporation, KFC, Borel & Specialty Restaurant Corporation and many others. In 1985, James started an additional branch of the business in Maryland and quickly grew. He acquired contracts with the 100 Light Street property in Baltimore, currently the TransAmerica building, servicing this property for 24 years and at the same time acquiring a service contract with BWI Airport for 25 years. These were the 2 largest contracts of their kind in Maryland.
 

In 1990, James was able to work for the Marriott Corporation again. This time in Bermuda. They had a particular need for maintenance that could not be performed locally due to the building design. This property was at one time an English castle that was dismantled and rebuilt in Bermuda as a convalescent hospital during WWII for British soldiers. Later, it became the Marriott Castle Harbour Resort. CSCI had done the exterior limestone cleaning & mortar repair for the property as well as other maintenance issues over that same period of service. This has allowed CSCI the unique opportunity to become the only service company in America that performed a restoration of an English castle. During the time in Bermuda, CSCI had contracts with several other hotels, Sonesta Beach Resort, Southampton Princess, St. James Condominiums, Washington Mall, Bank of Butterfield, Bank of Bermuda, Commercial Bank, Compass Point Bank, and some government buildings & other properties around the island.
 

In 2000 CSCI began working for the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) at the US Senate & US Capitol Building & US Capitol Police, and later, the US House of Representatives. CSCI performed many maintenance requests including marble cleaning & mortar repair, sheetrock repair, glass, skylight cleaning & repair, artwork restoration on many of the Capitol Hill buildings. In 2017, CSCI was awarded a blanket contract for all AOC properties and the first company to have a blanket-wide contract for all Capitol Hill buildings. This included the US Capitol Building, US Senate, US House of Representatives, US Library of Congress, US Supreme Courthouse & other judiciary buildings, US Capitol Police, US Botanical Gardens, and other agency buildings. This is due to our perfect safety record for high-rise building access and our depth in restoration, cleaning & repairs. We have also provided scaffolding & training for building access at the US Capitol Building & dome.

Also in 2000, CSCI restored the interior rotunda of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. This included badly stained limestone ledges, walls, pilasters, plinths, soap stone columns & capitols and bases, granite perimeter and marble flooring.
 

In 2005, CSCI began working for Under Armour at its Global Headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland for 15 years on all 6 buildings. Again, due to our building access and routine maintenance abilities, we have been entrusted to service this contract for many years.
 

James Donaghy has more than 30 years of experience in safety and a perfect track record for high rise building access equipment and has trained several hundred people in various forms of building access, including, scaffolding, swing stages, boatswain chair uses, rigging, boom lifts of every variety and sizes up to 125'. He has been instrumental in many building-access needs for a variety of issues here and abroad. He is a certified trainer for all types of OSHA regulations for 29 CFR 1925 Subpart L for safety & building access and rooftop rigging. He has made site plans for various jobs for building access and recently for the US Capitol dome maintenance.
 

When CSCI was first started there were no schools or training centers to learn about building access. Today there are many such as; IRATA, SPRAT or STI, and so on. All of these came about around the same time that CSCI was beginning in the early 1980s. James Donaghy had worked at Foster & Kleiser Billboard Company and then in the oil industry for Dresser Industries both in Houston, Texas. He began developing his distinctive safety practices as well as relying on OSHA. He also became a Scaffold Trainer under STI out of Houston, Texas and this combined knowledge and practice lead to CSCI being 30+ years without an injury on-the-job and an excellent safety record still standing today. Because of the depth in various architectural restoration cleaning and impeccable safety record is why Jim Donaghy & CSCI was awarded a blanket agency-wide contract with the Architect of the Capitol for all of Capitol Hill buildings in Washington, DC. This is the first time a single company has been awarded a contract with the Architect of the Capitol for all agency buildings. We are proud of that statement.
 

CSCI was tasked with several unique projects that we refer to as Exotica!

1. installation of rooftop decorative lighting on the Alex Brown building at 1 Commerce Place in Baltimore, Maryland 1n 1994. CSCI installed these lights during the winter 400' as part of the Baltimore city night-scape lighting.
2. Traverse system at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, Texas to access the elevator tower for the exterior maintenance of the 35-story glass curtain wall for the 1992 Republican National Convention.
3. Interior atrium use of a header beam scaffolding and temporary rigging point. This was created to access the interior of the 9-story atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building to repair mortar and clean marble walls.
4. Alexander Calder Mountains & Clouds sculpture located in the Hart Senate Office Building atrium in Washington, DC. In 2005 CSCI was commissioned to restore this sculpture, the largest in Washington, DC, due to our ability to have the project completed with as little disruption as possible to the US Senate's day-to-day operations & business. CSCI partnered with High Energy Sports to build the hang-bag used to access the sculpture.
5. Installation of the Leonardo De Vinci ornithopter concept art piece at the Center for Strategic & International Studies building at the John Hamre Commons in 2015. Video on this web site.
6. In December 2020, CSCI had been tasked by the Architect of the Capitol to provide scaffold training, a scaffold plan & scaffolding for the US Capitol dome maintenance in time for the inauguration. Video shows the scaffolding being lifted to the US Capitol rooftop for this project.

In 2018 CSCI was awarded the restoration of the terrazzo at the Charleston International Airport. This project had over 120,000 SQFT of terrazzo that was polished with remote controlled polishing grinders.

There are many other projects along the way that were not mentioned herein but they cover just about every aspect of exterior building restoration, atrium restoration on large private & government contracts.

Between our building access capabilities, our architectural component restoration background and the brand of partners we work with we have a superior combination to work for you.