Sargent: On Track Podcast

In this episode of the Sargent: On Track Podcast, President & CEO Eric Ritchie is joined remotely by Project Executive Peter Schaaf of Harkins Builders during National Employee Ownership Month. Peter explains how Harkins, founded in 1965 by Thomas Harkins, became an ESOP after former president Blaise Cook, who started with the company as a laborer, set up the plan in 2002 to secure the company's succession and give employees a real path to retirement. Harkins became 100% employee-owned in...

In this episode of the Sargent: On Track Podcast, Business Development Director Glenn Adams guest-hosts and is joined by DeBlois Electric CEO Mitch DeBlois and President Steve Morin in the Flywheel Studio for a conversation about employee ownership, just ahead of Employee Ownership Month in October. Mitch shares how the Lewiston, Maine company grew from a small, mostly residential shop started by his father in 1967 into a commercial electrical contractor of about 80 people. The two walk throu...

In this episode of the On Track Podcast, President & CEO Eric Ritchie is joined by VP of Finance & CFO Tasha Gardner in the Flywheel Studio to kick off National Employee Ownership Month! They share recent project wins across New England and a strong outlook for 2027, then talk about why Sargent celebrates employee ownership twice a year. Eric closes with a reminder that the real strength of employee ownership comes from people taking the ownership piece seriously every day, and that t...

Steve Perry showed up at Sargent the Monday after his University of Maine graduation in 1975. By 6:30 that morning, he was out in the field pounding grade stakes. He retired 46 years later as the company's head of business development. In between, he worked his way through the estimating office under Dale Jellison, helped run a satellite office in New Hampshire, and eventually became one of the central figures in how Sargent evaluated, priced, and won work. He was there for the foreign owners...

In this episode of the On Track Podcast, President & CEO Eric Ritchie is joined by Project Manager Scott Bartlett, Project Manager Ryan Cullen, and Project Executive Bernard Lupini in the Flywheel Studio to talk about the WingtraRAY, a new drone the Mid-Atlantic region picked up this year. The group breaks down how the drone covers ground far faster than the old quadcopter drone. Bartlett, Cullen, and Lupini talk through how that faster data helps coordinate daily work with foremen and su...