Related Articles

Joint Venture Strengthens Boston Minority Contractor

 January 19, 2010

Ada Alfonso, an 11-year Boston Local 103 member who started her own electrical shop in 2005, was proud to see a story about her success in a late December issue of the Boston Globe.

The article didn’t talk enough about the IBEW and the great mentors who made it possible for me to establish a rapidly-growing company that employs 16 electricians and apprentices. It didn’t talk about how we are moving into an exciting new partnership with New England’s largest signatory contractor, Sullivan and McLaughlin Companies, SullyMac.

Each year, says Alfonso, Local 103 Business Manager Michael Monahan sets up a session to help members who want to start up their own companies. After attending one of the sessions and launching Alfonso Electrical Services, Monahan introduced Alfonso—a Cuban immigrant who left school at 17 and worked as a waitress and bartender to support her family—to several signatory contractors looking for partners on projects requiring minority business participation. Monahan told the Boston Globe:

Everything she [Ada] does is 110 percent. She has no half speed.

Last September, Alfonso’s drive culminated in the establishment of the first minority woman- owned venture in the Commonwealth’s electrical contracting industry. The joint venture, Havana-Mac Construction, brings together Alfonso and Sullivan and McLauglin Companies (SullyMac).

Alfonso is excited about Havana-Mac becoming a model for other minority and women-owned businesses. Local 103, she says, has worked to create an environment that not only welcomes women into the building trades, but provides them with the tools to succeed in construction careers. Under Monahan and the trustees of Local 103, the same openness has opened up career opportunities to inner-city minority residents. The new venture, says Alfonso:

Will have the depth and resources of a larger construction company with the unstoppable ‘can-do’ spirit of a start up.  It’s not just a great accomplishment for us, but for the Commonwealth.

The “can-do” spirit is more than talk.  Only four years ago, Alfonso employed two electricians and grossed $150,000 in revenues, performing mostly residential services.  Today, as a result of her company’s work on projects like the new Northeastern University dormitory and athletic buildings in Roxbury, Alfonso Electrical Services grosses $6 million in annual sales, and has recently branched out into solar installations and marine electrical jobs.

Hugh McLaughlin, a principal of SullyMac, Local 103 trustee and president of the Boston chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association met Alfonso about five years ago after calling Monahan and asking for the names of minority contractors. He says:

It was a gut call. Ada was one of the smaller contractors, but she was interested and enthusiastic. I liked her. We connected well and did a bunch of projects together.

Reginald Nunnally, executive director of The State Office of Minority and Woman
Business Assistance (SOMWBA), which has been monitoring the joint venture, told the Globe, “This could be a model of how to take emerging companies and expand their business.”

Sole proprietorship is a difficult challenge, says McLaughlin, so the joint venture gives her an inside office and a window into how SullyMac—with two entities and yearly revenues of $160 million—deploys its resources. “Alfonso now has the horsepower of a company with substantial bonding capacity, estimating and finances behind her,” he says. Crediting his local union for nurturing the joint venture, McLaughlin says:

Local 103 has been terrific through this whole process.  Mike Monahan is very progressive and this [joint venture] wouldn’t have come together without mutual trust.

Havana-Mac has projected to write $10-$12 million in sales by the end of 2010 and will employ 25 electricians and apprentices.

The state’s minority and women’s assistance office also rendered strong support to Maureen Thompson, president and owner of Maureen Electrical Inc. who signed with Local 103 about 18 months ago.  Thompson, a former legal secretary who says she went from a “suit to a hardhat,”  told the office’s Certified Business Bulletin:

With these two organizations [SOMWBA and IBEW], we can provide qualified experienced electricians as well as help stimulate the economy and grow our business in a safe and controlled environment.