Company: Powers Engineering Inc.
Owners: Walter Sr., Walter Jr., and Michael Powers
Location: 6828 Post Road, North Kingstown
Number of employees: seven
Founded: 1987
Annual Sales: $400,000
THE POWERS BROTHERS, Walter J., Jr., left and Michael with state architect Domenic Carbone, Jr., right.
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A little lesson in illumination is under way.
Atop the walkway that circles the lower half of the State House dome, his suit jacket flapping in the wind of a cool November afternoon, Walter J. Powers Jr. stands by one of the 24 lamps trained upward at the dome’s 24 columns. Each light, he explains, casts a narrow beam that washes over the column’s lower portion, fades as it streaks past the top half, then disperses as it climbs to the 15-foot peak, revealing the intricate cornices that are among the building’s many architectural flourishes.
The angle of the beam makes this effect possible, Powers said. Finding a way to achieve that effect took plenty of work, trial and error. But that is Powers’ specialty. For the last seven years, in fact, he and his family firm of Powers Engineering Inc. have been working to light up the State House – inside and out – so that visitors and passersby may see just how decorative the 1904 building is. The work is part of a $16 million renovation job now under way.
It might seem like a heady task, designing the lighting scheme for the state capitol building. But the Powers’ work began in the sub-basement. They happened to be working for a contractor who was doing work at the State House in 1991. In December that year, just before Christmas, a fire ripped through four office rooms in the southwest corner of the basement.
After that blaze, the state building commissioner’s office asked Powers’ firm to study the building’s electrical system. Three months later, the commissioner’s office had its answer: The State House was a disaster waiting to happen.
Since the building was built before electricity, it had no overall electrical plan. And over the years, it was apparent that individual offices had added new electrical systems whenever a need arose, independent of the electrical needs of the other offices.
The result was a rat’s nest of wires slung together around pipes in the sub-basement. Circuit boards were so overloaded that there were fans blowing on them to keep them cool. Unused wires that were still charged dangled where pedestrians passed. Other electrical wires wrapped around steam pipes in the airshafts of the building.
“There were a lot of very unsafe conditions,” recalled Rhode Island state architect Domenic Carbone Jr. So dense was the morass of used and unused wires that, “You’d walk in the basement, and you’d think you were in the Pentagon.”
But since the sub basement had served as a dumping grounds of sorts, no one paid attention to it, Powers said.
“It took a fire to get people to notice that they had a problem,” he said. “They were lucky; it could have been a lot worse.”
In 1992, the building commissioner selected Powers Engineering to design an electrical and lighting scheme to replace the anarchic system. The task was to create something akin to a modern office. In the process, the building would come in line with safety codes.
It was the toughest job they’d ever accepted. Since they were working in a historic building, they were not free to add fixtures that would be out of place in an early-20th Century building. Further, the building had to remain open for business while work was going on.
And then there was the sub-basement, where the most difficult task was figuring out where to start – and which wires were in use and which weren’t.
“No one else wants this type of work – it’s very labor intensive, and it’s very dirty work,” Powers said.
But making old buildings new is what Powers Engineering does best. Each of the Powers, Walter, Michael A., and the elder Walter, has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Rhode Island. The elder Walter formed Powers Engineering in 1987. His sons meanwhile, joined him in 1992, each giving up jobs with large companies to come back to
Rhode Island. Walter, 38, served as chief electrical engineer for an addition project at Boeing’s Everett, Wash. facility; Michael, 37, worked for Stone & Webster Engineering in Boston. He also served on a U.S. Navy submarine.
Each earned significantly more money working for large corporations than he does now. But with the money came the travel and pressure that Corporate America often demands. They decided to compromise. Each returned home in 1992.
With their father, the Powers brothers specialize in what those in the business call “adaptive reuse” of old buildings. They have designed the new fire and surveillance system at the Adult Correctional Institute in Cranston and taken part in the renovation of Brown University’s Sayles Gymnasium.
But nothing compares with the State House building, which needed an electrical overhaul from the sub-basement up. They started by consolidating the existing system. Four sub-distribution panel boards were installed in each quadrant of the building. Each breaker on these boards is marked so that it is easy to see which circuit board it is feeding. And all circuit boards are now similarly well marked.
In large modern buildings, these kind of electrical systems are kept in separate rooms. But no such rooms existed in the State House. So, walled-off spaces were created for the panel boards. Meanwhile, the airshafts – where electrical wires were once wrapped around steam pipes – were sealed off and turned into 16 electrical closets where circuit boards for each of the four floors are kept.
“We took the little nooks and crannies that no one wanted and we made it work for the systems we had to put in place,” Walter Powers Jr. said.
After completing the initial electrical upgrade, they turned to the exterior lighting project, which has called for placing lamps in strategic locations so that they highlight the building’s architectural adornments without being seen themselves.
Now, they are working to upgrade the State House elevators, which are old and do not meet many of today’s safety codes.
It’s a big job. But though the company has just seven employees, it is able to tackle large projects by running efficiently, the Powers brothers said. It’s a business strategy they believe will serve them well into the future.
“We’re very small, but we don’t shy away from big projects,” Walter Powers said. “We’re going to be around for a long time.”
