Features

Showing Their Metal

Avid Ironworks Forges a Place in the Region’s Construction Industry
Janice Visconti

Janice Visconti says her career change from nursing to president of Avid Ironworks has been a successful blending of business and family.

When Janice Visconti left a career of more than 20 years to run the family business, she knew that her new role would surprise those who had known her as a pediatric nurse.

“It’s definitely a career change,” she told BusinessWest. “I see people I used to work with, and they ask, ‘are you still at the hospital?’ And I say, ‘oh, you won’t believe where I am.’”

To be specific, she’s in the president’s chair at Avid Ironworks in Springfield, which her husband, Dave, and her father-in-law, Joseph, launched in 2005.

Dave had built and operated an independent metal-fabrication business since the mid-1980s, but closed shop about five years ago. He reopened with his father at the helm as a silent partner, but Janice bought him out in 2006.

The timing was right to switch careers, she said, because she wasn’t actively working in nursing. About five years ago, after the Viscontis’ 9-year-old son lost a five-year battle with neuroblastoma, the importance of family overshadowed career goals, and Janice quit her job in home care to spend more time with her daughter, now 11. When the opportunity arose to join her husband in the family business, it just made sense.

“I like the flexibility of it, the challenge of doing something different and working for myself,” she said. “After my husband had done it for years, he said, ‘I don’t want to be the president of a company anymore.’ He just wanted to go in and work. I started getting interested in doing some office work, and he asked me, ‘why don’t you own the company?’”

At first, Janice worked at home away from Avid’s small headquarters on Rose Street in Springfield, but when a larger, neighboring building became available, the entire operations moved there. “It’s worked out well,” she said.

Eager to Work

Avid Ironworks serves as subcontractor for a variety of general contractors, with output including rails, stairs, catwalks, and other ornamental metals; gas metal arc welding, gas tungsten arc welding, and aluminum, stainless, and carbon steel welding; and a range of other services.

“We fabricate iron and materials here in the shop, and we have welders that will install on site,” Visconti said.

“We’re working on colleges, libraries, police stations, fire stations — that’s where the work is right now. There are a lot of bids out there in the public sector. We used to concentrate on private work, but then we became DCAM-certified.”

That certification by the Mass. Division of Capital Asset Management opens doors for contractors and subcontractors seeking public-sector work in the Commonwealth, and it also promotes diversity, in particular businesses owned by women and minorities, which is a benefit for Avid.

“With these public jobs, you have to be DCAM-certified to work on them,” Visconti said. “We have to submit a bid to DCAM, and they have to choose the lowest responsible bidder, and the general contractor who wins that bid has to choose you. It’s good in a way; it gets the general contractors working with a lot of different people. We’re already pre-qualified, so we can do the job.

“It’s definitely a process, though,” she continued. “A lot of general contractors stay away from that because there’s a lot of paperwork for anything dealing with the state. But once you get certification, it’s nice because it opens up lots of doors.”

For instance, she’s spoken with general contractors in Connecticut who had to become DCAM-certified to move into Massachusetts. “With work starting to dry up in Connecticut, they’re moving over the border, but that gives us more opportunities to work with different contractors.”

On top of that, Avid has also been certified through the State Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance.

“Being a woman in the workforce, that’s supposed to help with gaining contracts and being more competitive with other companies,” she said. “That was the whole purpose of it. I own a business in a competitive market, and if this gives me any type of advantage, that’s good.”

Still, she said, Avid typically bids on DCAM work that must go to the lowest bidder, so she hasn’t seen many ill effects of being a woman in an overwhelmingly male field.

In fact, due to DCAM, “there are contractors out there who will contact us because they need to work with more women and minorities,” she said. “The state of Massachusetts is definitely pushing toward equal opportunities, and that’s definitely a plus.”

The ability to bid low also gives Avid an advantage over Eastern Mass.-based entities.

“There are a few companies in this area that we’re quite competitive with, but a lot of the companies out east, their prices are really out there,” she said. “I don’t know if they have so much work that they don’t need to move into our area, but we really don’t compete with them.”

What growth Avid had attained in the past few years, however, must be balanced against the financial dark clouds impacting industries of all types.

“The steel prices alone have gone way up. The delivery freight surcharges, the gas surcharges, everything went up,” said Visconti — and that was before the sharp economic downturn started to put the clamps on some expected work.

“Things are definitely slowing down. In the wintertime, it’s always down anyway in this trade. But there’s some work that was out to bid, and they’re holding off or cancelling the jobs, and that affects us as well as everyone else. We’re lucky to be busy, but right now we’re expecting 2009 and possibly 2010 to be slow. Hopefully not too slow.”

Family Affair

Ironworking runs in the blood for Dave Visconti, whose grandfather worked at the Moore Drop Forging Co. in Springfield. And the company he founded truly is a family business; while he serves as operations manager, the Viscontis have a nephew on board as project manager.

Like most businesses these days, Avid is concentrating on simply surviving the next year or two. But down the line, Janice Visconti isn’t as interested in growing physically as much as maintaining a solid schedule of work.

“We don’t want to grow too big; that’s not always the best way, and we’re happy where we are,” she said. “We just want to stay busy and continue to provide a quality product in a timely and cost-effective manner for our customers.”

Meanwhile, Visconti doesn’t want to be the silent executive her father-in-law was. After all, she didn’t leave a career in health care to sit in an office and crunch numbers — so she became a certified welder in 2006.

“I figured, if I’m going to own this company, I want to learn the business. I don’t just want my name on it. So I got down there and learned how to weld,” she said.

Sounds like the framework of a successful second career.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at[email protected]