Page 22 - BusinessWest August 4, 2025

Apprentice >>Continued from page 17
inspiring the youth coming through
that program.”
Ganhao said his classmates in Lud-
low have been curious about his real-
world experience.
“I’ve been asked questions like, ‘is
that something you’re going to do for
the rest of your life? Are you just doing
it just for the heck of it? What’s up with
that?’ And I feel like kids are missing
out on the opportunities,” he said. “I
feel like it should be more publicized
because a lot of kids do want to try out
a trade.”
Tomala it’s easy to become passion-
ate about construction on actual job
sites, finishing real projects. He was
working with Ganhao and Harrington
on a home in Westfield the day they
spoke with BusinessWest, repairing a
basement leak and replacing windows
and shutters; a third apprentice, also
from Westfield Technical Academy,
wasn’t on the job that day.
“I think it’s rewarding for them to
be able to start something and fin-
ish it and see that completed project
because, often in the school system,
point in time. So they get that feeling
of satisfaction and camaraderie, under-
standing how important it is to the
client.”
And, hopefully, they find a passion
they can turn into a career, in a field
where young talent remains elusive.
“Just being able to see the customer
at the end, satisfied with our work,”
Ganhao added, “it’s something else.” BW
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they don’t get to complete a project in
full,” Tomala noted. “And they’re learn-
ing how to work with each other in
different skill sets and different person-
alities. They’re all having such a good
time doing it, and it’s just such a good
experience overall.
“I want them to form relationships
and friendships and to just understand
that the client is a human being —
everything we do, whether it’s a deck or
a whole house, is for somebody else,”
he added. “It might be a small project
to us, but it’s their entire world at one
Printing >>Continued from page 21
life,’ which is huge.”
Gerasimidis and his team have
been studying bridge deterioration and
working with DOTs in Massachusetts
and other states for about a decade.
“We know this problem quite well,”
he said. “We have seen thousands of
inspection reports; we have gone to
bridges. We have tested many beams in
our lab, so we know how these things
behave and exactly where we need to
repair.”
The red bridge is scheduled for
demolition in a few years. After that,
the UMass team will take the sprayed
beams back to its lab and test them,
measuring how successfully the
deposited steel powder adhered to the
structure in the field compared to in a
controlled lab setting, observe whether
it corroded further after it was sprayed,
and determine its mechanical strength
properties.
As a research partner, MassDOT
has helped identify the problem and
provided essential support for the
development and demonstration of
the technology. Gerasimidis credits its
forward-thinking approach as instru-
mental to the effort.
Equipment for this project was
supported through the Massachusetts
Manufacturing Innovation Initiative, a
statewide program led by MassTech’s
Center for Advanced Manufacturing
that helps bridge the gap between
innovation and commercialization in
hardtech manufacturing.
“This is a tremendous collabora-
tion where cutting-edge technology is
brought to address a critical need for
infrastructure in the Commonwealth
and across the United States,” said
John Hart, professor of Mechanical
Engineering at MIT. “I think we’re just
at the beginning of a digital transfor-
mation of bridge inspection, repair,
and maintenance, among many other
important use cases.”
“It’s a very Massachusetts suc-
cess story,” Gerasimidis added. “It
involves MassDOT being open-minded
to new ideas. It involves UMass and
MIT putting [together] the brains to
do it. It involves MassTech to bring
manufacturing back to Massachusetts.
So I think it’s a win-win for everyone
involved here.” BW
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