In the business world, good things often happen to deserving people when they work hard and, perhaps most importantly, take a risk.
For Patricia Steere, that moment came around 2010. After graduating college with a master’s degree in civil engineering in her home state of Delaware, Steere landed a job at a Boston engineering firm.
From there, she was transferred to Connecticut. Her last stop was Rhode Island, where she worked for a firm for 16 years. Then she made a fateful choice to break away and start her own civil and structural engineering firm.
“The company I was working for changed ownership,” she recalled. “I decided I wanted to make a move.”
Today her company, Steere Engineering Inc. in Warwick, has a staff of 30 people and generates annual revenue of about $4 million. That ranks among the state’s largest locally owned engineering firms, according to the Providence Business News 2019 Book of Lists.
Starting out, Steere had to survive by her wits. She reached out to contacts in the industry to learn about small engineering contracts that were coming up for grabs. She also had her firm designated as a disadvantaged business enterprise, which made it eligible for certain set-aside contracts.
It wasn’t easy trying to establish a new business during the Great Recession.
“It was definitely a hustle to get jobs,” she said. “There definitely were some ups and downs, but we managed to basically stay in the black every year and keep going.”
Today, a mainstay of her business is bridge- and highway-related contract work with state agencies in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Her firm offers a range of services: bridge design and ratings, construction support, structural engineering, environmental planning and permitting, highway and traffic design, bridge inspections and related 3D computer modeling.
The firm has chipped in on big projects such as the $600 million-plus “I-Way” project that relocated Interstate 195 away from downtown Providence, as well as the Shawmut Avenue Bridge replacement project in Boston. To date, the firm’s largest single contract is for $400,000, mainly for bridge design work for the R.I. Department of Transportation. But a lot of small contracts have added up.
“Sometimes we’re the prime contractor; sometimes we’re the subcontractor,” Steere explained.
In addition to her, other key personnel – all certified professional engineers – are Martin Pierce, the firm’s vice president; Jon Azevedo, inspection department manager; Steven Baker, highway department manager; bridge department managers Michael Adams and Allison Steere, Steere’s daughter. In addition, Thomas Steere, Steere’s son, handles computer-modeling duties.
She credited her firm’s growth to getting many repeat customers who appreciate the quality of its work.
“We want our clients to seek us out, not just to fulfill a [disadvantaged business enterprise] requirement,” according to her firm’s website, “but because they value our services as a leading engineering firm in the Northeast.”
OWNER: Patricia Steere
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Civil and structural engineering
LOCATION: 2350 Post Road, Suite 100, Warwick
EMPLOYEES: 30
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2010
ANNUAL REVENUE: About $4 million
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Blake@PBN.com.
