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 As Boston’s Seaport District continues to radically and rapidly evolve, much has been made of how a neighborhood has been created virtually from scratch. To be considered a full-fledged neighborhood, however, an area needs neighbors—a critical mass of residents—as one of its pillars. The population of the bustling South Boston outpost will increase significantly when the first phase of EchelonSeaport opens later this year.
Located in the heart of the district, the striking three-tower, mixed-use complex now under construction will be one of the most unique and luxurious places to live in the Seaport and the entire city. Valued at $950 million, the 1.3-million-square-foot project will include 447 condominium residences across two of its towers and 270 apartments in a third tower. When it is completed in the first quarter of 2020, some 2,000 new residents will call EchelonSeaport home.
Let’s compare plumbers and doctors.
They both perform vitally important jobs. They both diagnose and repair ailing systems. One works in operating rooms at hospitals, while the other helps build operating rooms by outfitting them with life-saving medical gases. Only one makes house calls any longer. One gets to have a fancy title in front of his or her name.
Here’s a question you may not have considered when comparing plumbers and doctors: Which one of them generates more wealth? The answer may surprise you.
Read “Plumber Vs. Doctor,” and see a comparative chart comparing net worth.
 It’s official: GBPCA contractor E.M. Duggan of Canton, Mass. is one of the best places to work.
According to an article The Boston Globe published in November, the contractor is among the Boston area’s top ten large companies based on employee satisfaction. It shares the distinction with organizations such as Massachusetts General Hospital, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
Read more about the honor that Duggan received in the Globe.
Massachusetts, and the Boston area in particular, has one of the highest rates of unfilled construction jobs in the country. As they try to staff up to meet surging demand amid a red-hot construction market, many contractors are singing the blues. But not GBPCA contractors that work with Plumbers Local 12.
“We don’t have a shortage of workers,” says Harry Brett, business manager for Local 12. According to a famous movie line, if you build it, they will come. The union finds that if it offers decent wages and benefits, a steady stream of people will come to Local 12—and they will help build any project, large or small, for GBPCA contractors. “We have plenty of applicants for our apprentice program,” Brett adds. “They know that they are applying for a lifelong, prosperous career, not just a job.”
Read more about how GBPCA contractors are able to staff projects using Local 12 plumbers.
 People typically take plumbing and heating systems for granted—until something goes wrong. Then they realize the critical roles that plumbers and gasfitters play.
Things went horribly wrong in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover on September 13 when a natural gas disaster caused explosions and fires throughout the communities. One person was killed, two dozen people were injured, and many properties sustained damage. About 8,400 Columbia Gas customers had their service shut off, and, in the weeks that have followed, have had to cope with the loss of heat and hot water as well as the use of their gas-fueled appliances. An army of Local 12 plumbers representing many Greater Boston Plumbing Contractor Association members has been playing a critical role in the recovery effort.
Read more the important work that GBPCA contractors and Local 12 plumbers did in the Merrimack Valley.
After 34 years in the industry, the last 20 of which he served as the executive director of the Greater Boston Plumbing Contractors Association (previously known as the PHCC of Greater Boston), Hugh Kelleher retired at the end of 2017. The Pipeline sat down with him to learn how and why he chose to become a plumber in his early 30s, to find out what he was doing before then, and to ask him to reflect on his journey.
Kelleher's story, which includes attending Phillips Academy Andover and Harvard University and a stint as press secretary and speechwriter for Congressman Jim Shannon is fascinating. Read more about the curious path that led Kelleher to the plumbing trade.
At 61 stories and 742 feet, One Dalton in the Back Bay will be the third tallest building in Boston. Now under construction, it will house the city's second Four Seasons hotel as well as private residences. It is scheduled to be finished in spring 2019.
GBPCA contractor E.M. Duggan is installing 161,000 feet of plumbing—that's over 30 miles of pipe winding its way through the tower. Bob Jones, Duggan's general foreman, is overseeing the crew.
The massive building is being constructed on a postage stamp-sized lot, so the project poses logistical challenges. The highly efficient project is a model of "lean construction." Read more about One Dalton in The Pipeline.
“When they put the mask on you
before you go under for surgery, it would be comforting to know that the
medical gas system had been properly installed. I would sure want to know that
a trained, certified plumber did the work.”
That's what my colleague, Local
12 Business Manager Harry Brett, said recently in an article, "Medical Gas:
A Matter of Life and Death," published in "The Pipeline," a
newsletter for the Eastern Massachusetts Plumbing Industry. It's something to
which we can all relate.
And yet, because of a lapse in
the Commonwealth’s laws, there are no regulations that govern the installation
of medical gas piping systems in Massachusetts. A bill currently before the
state legislature would establish regulations and bring medical gas piping systems
under the control of the Massachusetts Board of Examiners of Plumbers and
Gasfitters. The board would set standards to ensure that licensed, trained
plumbers would perform the critical work.
There is a classic poster from the 1930s that proclaims, “The Plumber Protects the Health of the Nation.” As Wayne Thomas sees it, the role of the Mass. Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters is to protect Massachusetts’ consumers from all things related to plumbing. Among other important considerations, the health and safety of the Commonwealth’s citizens are at stake.
But, its executive director says, the Board also provides protection for licensees. It monitors unlicensed practice, for example. It’s a delicate balancing act. The Board stands at the juncture between the public and the plumbers who keep the water flowing in the state.
The Massachusetts Plumbing Code serves as the Board’s platform on which it balances. Its regulations and state laws light the way for licensees and provide a uniform path for compliance. The code helps insure the safety and integrity of the state’s plumbing infrastructure all the way to the consumers who rely on it. The Board spends a lot of time focused on the code — especially lately as it is in the middle of a major overhaul, the first in 11 years.
Read more about the Massachusetts Plumbing Board and its executive director in The Pipeline, the newsletter about the Eastern Massachusetts plumbing industry.
Riding a wave of robust growth, the Boston area has an urgent need for additional housing — particularly affordable housing. In the city of Boston alone, Mayor Martin J. Walsh has called for building 53,000 more units, including subsidized moderate- and low-income housing, by 2030. The Greater Boston Plumbing Contractors Association (GBPCA) and Local 12 want to be part of the solution.
To fill the need, developers are building many mid-rise wood frame apartment buildings throughout the region. AvalonBay, for example, is developing a 400-unit project in Quincy. It includes five buildings, each five stories tall, with studio as well as one- and two-bedroom apartments for rent. Thanks to the creation of a new residential division, Local 12 plumbers are on the job at Avalon Quincy working for GBPCA contractor, Patriot Plumbing.
They are making a strong first impression. Read the full article in The Pipeline, the newsletter about the Eastern Massachusetts plumbing industry.
Barring a major downturn in the economy, construction in Boston will continue to be very strong. Examples…
- - The Huge Millenium Tower ...Will open this summer. Tallest residential building north of New York City – 60 stories, 685 feet high – on the site of the old Filenes. Many units are already sold. 1-bedrooms started at $1.6 million.
Cheapest units now available: $3.3 million. Total sales by last fall were already at $1.5 billion…There will also be a hotel, and commercial businesses located on
lower floors. LATEST NEWS: Someone is purchasing the full-floor penthouse on the 60th floor – supposedly a local family. Asking price was $37.5 million.
- - Boston Redevelopment Authority took control of the Winthrop Square Garage in December. The garage had been condemned in 2013, and sits on one of the most visible plots in the financial district. Some recent legal glitches will be overcome. Proposals are in the works for a building as tall as 780 feet. That would make it several stories taller than the Prudential tower.
- - Mayor Marty Walsh: In the second year of the Walsh administration 1,022 new affordable rate housing units came on line – the most in Boston’s history. But finding an affordable unit in Boston is still difficult. Walsh is working with large developers, colleges and universities to increase funding for constructing affordable units. His goal: 53,000 units by 2030 – including new dorm rooms.
- - Seaport District….According to the Boston Globe: 12 vacant acres there were purchased for $359 million late last year. Two smaller parcels were sold to Chinese investors for $100 million.
- - The NorthPoint area near Lechmere will benefit from spillover from Kendall Square, where commercial rents are the 10th highest in the country MIT is working on a proposed major redevelopment project adjacent to its campus.
- - John Hancock will build a new 26 story tower along Stuart Street in the Back Bay. Construction starts this year.
- - Along Washington Street at Downtown Crossing, a developer is proposing a 30 story building on a lot that is 1/10 of an acre. It would have a frontage of 38 feet.
- - Harvard is starting up its long-delayed development in Allston-Brighton. Will include new graduate housing, and science buildings. According to Harvard Magazine: “The long-range goal of redeveloping the vast acreage further east (beneath and beyond elevated roadways, a former rail yard, and other less visible properties), once thought far off in the future, now appears a realistic prospect.”
- - Amazon has purchased land in Fall River for a new 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center that will employ 500 people. Construction starts this year.
- - Boston rents are up nearly 6% over the last year – about three times the rate of inflation. Average Boston rent is now above $2,000. Boston has become the 4th
most expensive rental area in the country – trailing only San Francisco, New York City and Silicon Valley.
If you put in a day’s work, you expect to get a day’s pay — and you expect to get paid promptly, right?
Those expectations are at the core of our free enterprise system. For decades however, plumbing contractors have been putting in a day’s work, but not getting paid in full until many weeks — or more typically, many months — later. Thanks to a recent Massachusetts law, that’s no longer the case.
Associated general contractors had been using a long-held practice known as “retainage” to routinely withhold payment to subcontractors such as plumbers. Incorporated into most contracts, GCs would customarily hold back 10 percent of a subcontractor’s pay until they determined that the work was completed to their satisfaction. Although construction projects would, in fact, be successfully completed, GCs wouldn’t release the funds until much later.
The Mass. retainage law, however, changes the dynamics by specifying a payment schedule as well as the amount that can be withheld. Read more in The Pipeline, the industry newsletter jointly produced by the GBPCA and Plumbers Boston Local 12.
 We may be in the midst of winnowing candidates to nominate for president of the United States, but the presidency of the Greater Boston Plumbing Contractors Association was decided last spring. Members voted Joseph C. Cannistraro, the CFO of J.C. Cannistraro in Watertown, to head the organization’s executive board.
Cannistraro brings years of experience to the leadership role. He also brings an abiding interest in education and learning to the position.
He plans to leverage the resources of the GBPCA and encourage other member contractors to take advantage of the organization’s educational opportunities. Through its affiliation with the Mechanical Contractors Association of America and the Plumbing Contractors of America, the GBPCA offers training and best practice models in areas such as project management. Cannistraro is hopeful that by pursuing education and working together, GBPCA members can help themselves, help one another, and make the organization stronger.
Read more about Cannistraro in a profile published in The Pipeline, the industry newsletter jointly produced by the GBPCA and Plumbers Boston Local 12.
About half of the apartments, homes, and condos permitted through June 2015 in Boston -- about 1,200 units -- are either low-income housing or market-rate properties to be priced for middle-income wage earners. According to the Boston Globe, Mayor Martin J. Walsh considers the surge in affordable housing to be a welcome trend.
The uptick in new construction is helping to create a more diverse housing mix, but there is still great demand for affordable housing. Walsh and others are urging developers to move forward with projects. The city's Inspectional Services Department has streamlined the building permit process and reduced the amount of time it takes to issue approvals.
Walsh has established a goal of adding 53,000 new units to the city's housing stock by 2030. In the midst of Boston's red-hot real estate market, that goal would be easily met.
A couple of major trends are taking place in the mechanical trades in Boston, and they are important to understand.
The first involves innovation. Thirty years ago on a large-scale commercial plumbing job you would hear the plumbers say: “Plumbing is plumbing.” There was a sense that the trade would continue to be what it had been, more or less, since the days of the Romans when the Latin plumbum, the word for lead – gave the trade its name.
In the many hundreds of years since the Romans the trade had indeed introduced a few innovations. By the twentieth century we were no longer using lead pipes to transport water. Cast iron drainage piping became common, and by the late years of the century various forms of plastic, including PVC and PEX, had been introduced.
Yet the trade remained essentially the same. Plumbers went out to jobs, cut holes in studs, and soldered, clamped or glued systems together.
It was the digital revolution that caused things to change in a dramatic way. You see the innovations particularly on commercial jobs where buildings are now being fully designed back at the shop where pipe is then being cut and fabricated. Whole batteries of fixtures are now being put together under controlled conditions, before being lifted by cranes and popped in place.
Perhaps even more striking are job site innovations such as the use of the Trimble system, which allows the folks back at the office to determine the precise location of hangers and cores. Data is sent wirelessly out to the job, downloaded into the Trimble, and locations for those hangers and holes are identified and marked in a matter of minutes. It is a very far cry from the days when we used plumb bobs and chalk lines on the floor to fix our locations. If you had a told a plumber three decades ago that this would be the way apprentices and journeymen in the 21st century would be doing layout, they would have looked back at you with a very puzzled expression.
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The second major trend in the mechanical trades – and, to a larger extent the building trades in general – is the growing shortage of skilled workers. Decades of an educational system that placed an emphasis on ‘going to college’ had given the trades a bad rap. Few students leaving high school had been told that among their options is joining a union apprentice program, where if you worked hard after five years you could be earning a six-figure income. Instead of being tens of thousands of dollars in debt from obtaining a college degree, a skilled craftsperson today has opportunities that often exceed those with BA’s.
This is not to say that college is not useful. Indeed, we are finding that more and more of those who are joining the trades arrive with some advanced education. For instance, in recent years during the Local #12 application process there has been at least one law school graduate. Even at the high school level, we are seeing a renewed appreciation for the importance of our vocational schools.
What is becoming apparent is that the coming retirement of baby-boomers is opening up a whole set of employment opportunities for those willing to take on the challenges of learning a mechanical trade in the 21st century. Increasingly, there are shortages in various parts of the country of skilled plumbers and electricians.
In the years to come, the mechanical trades will take on a whole new look. And we’ll be looking for smart, hard-working young people who are ready to take on the challenges and opportunities that the building trades can offer.
There is a Willie Nelson song: “Mamas Don’t Let Your Children Grow up to Be Cowboys.” For years, the American educational system sang a similar tune: Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be plumbers (or electricians, or carpenters, etc.)
That tune is changing.
I posted the most recent industry news, including:
- New GBPCA officers
- Rental units not keeping pace with demand in Boston
- Are the Olympics coming to Boston?
- Uber and subcontractors
There is plenty more info. Read my June/July 2015 news update.
Last week the BOSTON GLOBE ran an informative article about the future of the local housing market. Will the rapid rise in sales and prices continue into 2014? Probably....even though interest rates are rising and the supply of homes is lower than it has been in a long time. And let's not forget the impact of the stock market. When the market is rising, people feel richer, and are more apt to pay more for a home.
On January 5, 2014, The Boston Globe published an article I wrote on its Opinion/Editorial pages. It has generated a lot of response. You can read the article on the Globe's Website. I have also included the text below.
SINCE THE moment Marty Walsh declared for mayor, there has been much discussion about what his long history with construction unions might mean for Boston. He was the head of the Boston Building Trades, representing laborers, electricians, plumbers, and other unions — a resume that raised concerns in some quarters about how he might approach contracts with city employees.
Most commentators took too little account of which union world Walsh comes from. There is a tendency to conflate construction unions with other types of private-sector unions, and with public unions. But each of these three types functions differently, and Walsh’s history with construction unions actually bodes well for taxpayers.
As a representative of employers, I sat in joint union-management meetings with Walsh. Although he and I represented different sides in collective bargaining, I supported his candidacy for mayor. In meetings he was able to find consensus. He in no way fits the stereotype of a construction union leader as a table-banger or bully.
Beyond that, Walsh comes from a world where people are employed only when there is a job that needs doing. Construction unions in Boston and elsewhere are cognizant of the bottom line in these key ways:
■ Our layoff process rarely involves any subsequent arbitration. In over 25 years running my own company and negotiating with the Boston plumbers union, we’ve had exactly one such arbitration. Workers understand that their jobs depend upon performance and the availability of work.
■ Unlike public unions representing teachers, police, and firefighters — and unlike unions in other private-sector industries — construction unions provide no job guarantees. There is no tenure or seniority. As a union employer, I hire the best people and fire those who don’t perform. Period.
■ How much notice must the employer give a union construction worker before layoff? Fifteen minutes. This happened to me 30 years ago, when I was as a young plumber. We were finishing work in a downtown Boston apartment building. At 3 p.m. the boss called: “Hugh, I’m sorry, but we don’t have any work tomorrow.” Two months later, when there was another job, he hired me back.
The construction industry’s emphasis on reliability and performance offers lessons for city government. While the benchmarks for construction work may be more easily measured than those in, say, education (“How many feet of pipe did you put in today?” vs. “How much did your students learn today?”), the construction model of linking employability to performance could prove useful as Walsh deals with public-sector unions.
Consider also the way construction unions deal with wages and benefits. When construction unions reach a wage agreement, it is understood that the money needed to keep pension and health funds solvent is subtracted directly from the total wage package. Negotiating wage increases while treating benefits as an afterthought has led to disaster for many public pension funds. But that isn’t what construction unions and employers do.
Here’s an example. Last summer I helped negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the Boston plumbers union. After a series of meetings, we employers agreed to a raise of $2 an hour. This agreement did not presume that additional money would magically appear for benefit programs. If workers wanted to strengthen their health or pension plans, or to operate the union training school in Dorchester, funding would come from their wages. And because we employers hold an equal number of votes on all the union funds’ boards, we ensure a business eye is brought to those decisions.
Sadly, construction unions (and unionized contractor groups like the one I represent) have historically done a poor job helping the public understand that we operate in ways that distinguish us from the common impression of “unions.”
Walsh says he’s interested in strengthening the middle class in Boston. Having sat across the table from him, I have no doubt about his commitment. But once he takes the employer’s seat, the standards he lived by during his years with construction unions will serve Bostonians well.
The housing recovery in Boston continues to move forward at a good clip. Home prices in the Boston area are up 10% from a year ago. The number of sales have increased by 6%. In general, construction in Massachusetts is on a strong rebound.
Other parts of the country have not yet seen the vigorous rebound that is happening here -- not yet. But already there are very positive signs throughout the nation. In fact, metropolitan areas around the US are showing strong housing growth.
Investment in housing is one of the surest signs of an improving economy.
For more, see this article in THE BOSTON GLOBE.
Look at any of the magazines about our industry – Plumbing & Mechanical, Plumbing Engineer, Contractor – and you will quickly realize that our industry is changing. Rapidly.
Many of us who have been in the business for a few decades are surprised by the pace of innovation. After all, how many times have we heard the expression: “Plumbing is plumbing.” The intended meaning is: Once you become a journeyman and understand the basic principles and installations, you pretty much have it down. It was never that simple. But it really is not that simple anymore. Ask any PHCC contractor. This business is changing faster than we expected.
Not that the basic ideas behind a plumbing system have been altered. As another old plumbing saying goes: “Hot on the left, cold on the right, and $#*! goes downhill.”
Like every other industry, ours has been subject to a number of innovations – many of them connected to digital technology. Other advances are quite simple. This includes long, flexible coated stainless steel gas tubing that is turning the Rigid 300 pipe machine into a three-legged dinosaur. But at the other extreme there are electronic and mechanized devices that are changing the way we design and build our projects.
The challenge for all of us in the industry is to remain aware of these innovations, and to employ them in ways that help us get our work done. As we teach the next generation of plumbers at schools such as the Plumbers Local 12 Training Center, we owe it to them to make sure we hand them more than a pencil and tape measure. Those were the tools we grew up with. And while a pencil and ruler will always remain essential, we need to make sure that the toolkits of those who succeed us contain the equivalent of a laptop or iPad, as well as other electronic devices that will enable plumbers, fitters, and all the other trades to work more effectively than ever before.
A horse is a horse. Of course?
A very smart man once told me: “Be sure you are riding the horse the direction it’s going.”
Sometimes this is uncomfortable. What if the horse is headed in a direction we don’t like? Shouldn’t we pull in the reins?
But we can’t. For better or worse, when it comes to innovation within industries, the tradesmen almost always need to “ride the horse the direction it’s going.” There are exceptions. There will always be some demand for craftsmen to use “old techniques” in the construction industry. Specialized tile work or painting come to mind. But it is difficult to imagine that a modern customer would pay to have a cast iron sanitary drainage system where every joint poured lead.
“Innovate, or die” is an expression entrepreneurs sometimes use. But we know that change and innovation is not always popular. It doesn’t matter. There are commercial designers who refused to learn the digital technology used to produce magazine charts and images. Most of those artists are out of work. Some of the plumbers attending Industry Night will remember when there were howls of protest when no-hub began to replace lead and oakum. Later, many protested the use of plastic piping. Of course there remain good reasons to prefer cast iron over plastic in some applications. But the overall point remains true: If you want to be part of any industry, you have to adapt with the times.
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As Boston’s Seaport District continues to radically and rapidly evolve, much has been made of how a neighborhood has been created virtually from scratch. To be considered a full-fledged neighborhood, however, an area needs neighbors—a critical mass of residents—as one of its pillars. The population of the bustling South Boston outpost will increase significantly when the first phase of EchelonSeaport opens later this year.
