Consigli Construction Co.’s headquarters – which melds a restored 1870s granite school house with a modern steel and glass office building – is a visual metaphor for the Milford-based company, which has foundations in the past but an eye on the future. Since taking over as president in 1994, Anthony Consigli has expanded his family’s firm from fewer than 20 employees to about 600, broadening the company’s reach into subspecialties including academic buildings, hospitals, science labs and landmark restoration. Last year, the firm began expanding into New York’s Hudson Valley, forming a partnership with Kirchhoff Construction.
Anthony Consigli
Title: President, Consigli Construction Co., Milford
Age: 43
Experience: More than 20 years in the industry, 16 as president
Tell me a little about the company’s history.
The company’s been in existence since 1905. We’re the fourth generation. My great grandfather, Peter Consigli, had started it. He had six sons; they each took up a masonry specialty. That was the emanation of them being general contractors – one was a plasterer, one was a brickmason, one was a stonemason, one was a laborer. Four of the brothers went off to fight in [World War II], and my grandfather stayed here to run the business, and that’s when they went into more of a general contractor/builder.
You said your father was more of a hands-on guy, whereas you wanted to go in a different direction. What was the opportunity you saw there?
Well, the company was much smaller back then. We were very focused on working in a small area, basically the area around Milford. Right when I graduated was the recession of the early 1990s, and very quickly we saw that that model wasn’t going to work anymore. So we knew that we either had to get bigger or die.
At that time you had been doing mostly local commercial work?
We did some building work. But we did snowplowing. We dug graves for all the area cemeteries, which was an unusual line of work. We did utility work, MassElectric pole work. So we were doing a lot of things that we just decided weren’t going to work for us long-term. The company had always had a very strong masonry background. So we kept a specialty with building restoration. And that’s stayed with us – even now we do a lot of building restoration.
It seems like something like a concert hall or a church would come with a lot of non-standard features. Do you have to have specialists on staff to deal with such things?
One of the benefits of some growth is that you can bring on people who can help you, with skill sets that you don’t necessarily have. That’s been one of the benefits of the last two years, that we’ve had this window of opportunity to recruit some really great people that we wouldn’t have had the chance to even talk to back when the economy was better. So we’re trying to take advantage of this small window to bring some different skill sets in here with say, large laboratory projects or health science-type projects. If there’s one area that we’re really focused on building, it’s that one.
Most construction firms are struggling right now – but last year you acquired a firm in New York state. Why look to expand right now?
There were a lot of reasons why it seemed like a good fit, and the State House project was a big part of that. We’re restoring the New York State House, [a project begun before the acquisition, and we’ve since begun] a large project at West Point, a renovation of the F.D.R. museum, and we’re doing a large hospital project down there. It not only bolstered our resume, it ensured that we wouldn’t have to lay people off when the economy first went into a tailspin at the end of 2008.
How do you deal with the constraints of a project like the State House? They’re not exactly going to start conducting the legislature in the Marriott in order for you guys to renovate.
[Laughs.] No, no, no. We’ve become very good at phased restoration – we work in hospitals all the time, and we actually restored the Maine State House. So we have some experience to take to the job. There’s a lot of night work, and a lot of effort goes into scheduling and planning in order to determine when you can work in different areas. I would say the biggest quirk is that they have these huge ornamental skylights that are coming from Germany – there’s a lot of artistry that goes into them, and getting everybody on the same page as to a fairly subjective element like artistry in two different time zones and two different cultures has been a challenge.
I can see that. There’s probably a lot of state birds and things you’ve got to work into the glass.
Squirrels. I’ve seen a lot of different squirrel designs.
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