Q: What is your job title with Sargent? What are your main responsibilities?
A: I am the Business Development Director at Sargent. My main role is to foster relationships with past, current, and future clients with the intent of earning opportunities to build projects well into the future. I also focus on our prospective projects and volume/business planning. Another part of the job is participation in the many industry associations, educational groups, and political committees that all support the contracting community.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you typically face in your role?
A: We are in a very strange business climate at the moment. Sargent is fortunate enough to have a large backlog of work and more projects in the market than we can bid on. However, we are also facing a skilled labor shortage and material cost and supply issues. Trying to provide current and prospective clients with the most accurate feedback on our ability to build their projects is keeping things interesting.
Q: What were you doing in your career before you came to Sargent?
A: I went to work for Sargent & Sargent directly out of college. Previously, I interned with another general contractor for three summers, and prior to that, I worked as a lifeguard and park ranger for the Maine Department of Conservation.
Q: What do you enjoy about your job?
A: I enjoy the interaction with our public and private clients, engineers, and industry associations. Being “at the tip of the spear” for future projects and markets 2, 5, 10 and more years out is very exciting. I look forward to many of these future opportunities becoming reality. The politics related to the development and contracting is also something that’s near and dear to me and I like working through critical issues as they come up.
Q: What is it about Sargent that makes this a great place to work?
A: The employees at every level make Sargent stand out. We have tremendous leadership, from the executive team to the foremen, operators, and craft workers in the field. The drive that all these people have to build and set up the next generation of employee-owners for the future is nothing less than remarkable.
Q: The construction industry in general has an aging workforce. How do you think we could do a better job of attracting young people?
A: Our workforce development team and HR staff are already doing a stand-up effort to address this challenge. I think we need to continue to support young workers entering the trades and support their on-the-job technical education. We also need to continue to educate people on the long-term benefits of being employee-owned and saving for retirement.
Q: Is there anyone in your life that you’ve considered to be a mentor?
A: Yes, several people at Sargent including Pete Parizo, Craig Shorey, Chris Lynch, Dee Hobart, Steve Perry, and Tim Folster. They all helped me out at different stages in my career.
Q: How do you like to spend your free time when you’re not at work?
A: My wife and I have four children, ages 13, 11, 9, and 5. They keep us quite busy as they participate in a wide variety of team sports and individual activities depending on the season. As a family, we enjoy hiking, mountain biking, ice skating, and the occasional obstacle course race. We go tent camping four or five times every summer and also frequent the family camps in Madison and Richmond.
