Just because someone placed what looked like a pipe bomb – nails, pencils and all – beneath a vehicle parked in the Vangent lot Wednesday night in the East Hills Business Park didn’t mean that Lawrence’s largest private-sector employer had to shut down.

Bomb Squad personnel from Overland Park examine an apparent pipe bomb, as viewed Wednesday night on a monitor receiving a feed from a robot at the bomb's location in a parking lot at the East Hills Business Park. The investigation came after a Vangent worker discovered the device under his vehicle. Vangent had redirected service needs to other data centers Wednesday night.

Instead, the company called its communications plan into action, notified its 250 employees on site and evacuated about 50 from an adjacent building.

All this, as incoming calls and Web-based communications on behalf of its customers were redirected to other Vangent data centers.

“It was just seamless and flawless,” said Mark Andrews, human resources manager for Vangent, formerly Pearson Government Solutions, in Lawrence. “Nobody had a dropped call.”

Coming after the recent massacre at Virginia Tech and a bomb scare last month that threatened schools in Douglas County, managers at Vangent found themselves dealing with a tangible threat soon after 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

An employee – described as a manager by a Vangent spokeswoman – had found what looked like a pipe bomb underneath his vehicle. Police were notified. A bomb squad came in from Overland Park. Within four hours, the device had been destroyed, and a physical investigation was under way.

Through it all, Vangent employees, managers and corporate officials were busy dealing with the work disruption, accommodating evacuated workers sent to an adjacent building’s cafeteria and ensuring that all employees – Vangent carries a payroll of about 1,300 full- and part-time associates in Lawrence – were safe.

“It’s a big company, but when it came down to it, the number one interest was: How are the employees doing?” said Andrews, recounting the contacts he had with corporate officials in Arlington, Va., throughout the night and into Thursday morning.

A Lawrence police spokeswoman said Thursday that an investigation was ongoing, and that there was no new information to release to the public.

Andrews said that police “did a very nice job” of handling the situation Wednesday night, and that Vangent officials were very impressed with the work of all emergency personnel on site.

“I don’t think that gets talked about enough,” he said.

From all he has learned, Andrews said, the incident was not spurred by anything at Vangent or its operations.

“It was an employee’s car,” Andrews said. “From every indication that we have, it was a personal matter, and it had nothing to do with Vangent.”

The employee was back at work Thursday, Andrews said.

Vangent provides call-center and data-processing services at the center in East Hills, where it has two buildings that cover a combined 195,000 square feet. Its jobs involve mostly government contracts, from fielding millions of calls from Medicare beneficiaries to processing millions of applications regarding student loans to handling millions of inquiries about potential workplace discrimination.