Rutland resident Len Gengel and his wife Cherylann drive through Ohio after finishing a speaking engagement about their work building an orphanage in Haiti. Cherylann drives while Len works on his laptop.

The two now travel frequently to Grand Goâve, Haiti, where the orphanage is located — Len just completed his 48th trip in two-and-a-half years. He estimates he has spent more time recently in the Latin American country than in the U.S.

“I never would have thought four years ago that we would be doing this,” said Len. The idea of opening an orphanage in Haiti was not Len’s, but belonged to his daughter Britney, who died in the 2010 Haitian earthquake.

Since the earthquake, the Gengels have worked tirelessly on the Be Like Brit orphanage, an earthquake-safe home for orphaned children and memorial to Britney, all with the help of fundraising and donations from the Massachusetts construction community.

Len, the former president of the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts and the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Central Massachusetts, took charge of the construction. Cherylann organized the “Be Like Brit” team and decided how the orphanage should be run.

“One of the beautiful parts of this story is that Len and his wife are a team. They couldn’t have done this without each other,” said friend and Senior Vice President of Salem Five Bank, Mark Leff.

The result of their labors is a 19,000-square foot, B-shaped complex, outfitted with its own medical clinic, room for 33 boys and 33 girls, and six missionary rooms to represent the six people killed in the group with whom Britney had traveled.

A sophomore at Lynn University, Britney Gengel was on a three-week university program in Haiti when the earthquake struck. Hours before the disaster, Britney sent her mother a text message expressing the effect the trip was having on her:

“They love us so much and everyone is so happy. They love what they have and they work so hard to get nowhere, yet they are all so appreciative. I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.”

Britney, three other Lynn University students and two professors were killed when their hotel collapsed. It took rescue crews 33 days to recover her body from the rubble.

The Challenge

Over the next three years, the Gengel family worked to build the orphanage, a task made even more difficult by the destruction the earthquake left behind. Haitians face widespread homelessness, poverty and disease, according to Oxfam.

Len calls building the orphanage the greatest building challenge of his life.

With the country in ruins, supplies were virtually unavailable and largely had to be brought in from the United States. Thanks to Len’s history in the home-building community, donations poured in.

Perini Construction of Framingham, Consigli Construction of Milford and Francis L. Harvey & Sons of Worcester all pitched in to donate supplies for the orphanage.

“Between the three companies, they donated everything we needed times two. They filled an entire box truck with all of the supplies we needed, including a toilet seat for the outhouse,” said Len. “We needed a lot — there really was nothing in Haiti.”

Others like TRO JB architect Paul Fallon, STV Construction Project Manager Matt Dunn, and L.A.L. Masonry, Inc. owner Joe Chiaramonte volunteered to design the building and help the construction.

Even more important to Len was making sure the orphanage would survive another earthquake. Buildings crumbled or were left structurally unsound after the 2010 earthquake due to a lack of engineering standards and poor construction, according to reports.

“I wasn’t going to go in and show them the American way of building things,” said Len. “I was going to employ them and show them how to make buildings earthquake-safe.”

The process is intensive and involves a system of double layers of reinforcing bars and 18-inch concrete columns every 12 feet. The resulting structure was outfitted with over 155,000 pounds of reinforcing bars that will help it weather the ups and downs of an earthquake — a movement similar to a ship on the ocean, explained Len.

Despite the fact that the orphanage opened last January, the Gengels show no signs of slowing down. They still fly to Haiti around once a month, where they spend a week or two at a time at the orphanage.

“It’s just a part of our lives now,” said Len.