Sara A. Stafford
Age: 53
Title: Owner, Stafford Construction
President, the Associated Subcontractors of Massachussetts
Experience: 30 years
Sara A. Stafford is the first woman president of the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts – an organization for a testosterone-heavy group of workers – but to her, that’s more of a footnote. A few months into her new position, the economy has put a lot of urgency on the group’s legislative aims, along with its usual work in educating members on thorny insurance and legal issues.
Still, Stafford’s been in the business long enough to have encountered her share of eye-rolling from men in the business back when she got her start; she sat down in her Saugus office to talk with Banker & Tradesman about wrangling a place in the industry.
What are the big legislative fights this year?
We filed a bill for prompt payment, which is an effort to put in place in Massachusetts what already exists in many states. Right now all of our contracts don’t let us stop work for non-payment – you have to keep going. So what we would like to do is make those kinds of contractual clauses invalid. Almost 25 states have this, which is basically a statue that says, ‘If you’ll do the work, you’ll get paid.’
What we’re finding in so many projects now is that the financial backing on the project gets pulled unbeknownst to the subcontractor, because we don’t really have a relationship with the owner and it’s really often hidden from the [general contractor], too.
Another bill is called the ‘pay if paid’ bill. Basically [there’s a common] contractual clause that says, ‘You’ll get paid when [the owner] gets paid.’ Now the problem with that is that we don’t have a relationship with the bank that’s financing the owner – we’re several tiers down in the struggle – so we would like to see those contractual clauses be made invalid as well.
One is more the ability to stop work, and the other is more, ‘You can’t ask me to do work that you don’t have financing for.’
I’m sure you’ve tried to push through this type of legislation before. Are your odds better this year?
Because of the financial crisis, this will be a very difficult task. But we have two years, and especially in the case of prompt payment, we have great need because of the weakness of the financial institutions. Subcontractors do not have the ability to call in everybody’s financial statements up the chain. They can see ours but we can’t see them, and that’s a part of what we see as a real crisis – especially for new companies that are attempting to begin work.
The announcements about your presidency touted you as the first female in charge of the association. Is that a big deal?
Not to me. I’m almost 30 years into working in this industry. There have been a terrific amount of mentors – female mentors – and there’s been a terrific amount of women working in this industry.
How’d you get your start in the industry? Can you give me the resume?
Ohio University, journalism and public relations, and I came to Boston and started working for the Atlantic Monthly Magazine. So that’s kind of an odd way to start, but it didn’t pay much, I didn’t feel it was the career for me, and … I just ran into someone who was running a company that I liked a lot, and I went to work for him and I became the general manager of his supply house in Boston. I learned everything technically about doing the work that we do [at my current business], which is drywall and plastering and framing and that sort of thing. And after being with him for 13 years, I decided to start my own business. And that’s been 15 years ago.
That must have been a very different scene than the Atlantic Monthly, and a different type of customer to deal with.
There were a lot of folks who were immigrants to this country, and coming from Cleveland, Ohio, there was a language barrier anyway, with the accents around here. But I was not accepted all that well at first by some of the customers; it was a little hard for them to get used to working with a woman.
Yeah, I’d imagine people were more up-front about gender biases 30 years ago.
(laughs) I was told to “go home and have babies” and “This wasn’t really a good career, path, you need to go home” – but these were the same people who helped me learn about the business and later on became my mentors.
Top Five legislative coups from ASM’s past :
2004: ASM was on a special commission that helped craft a reform package for the construction process; changes included improved designer selection procedures and a requirement for experienced project managers on all municipal projects of more than $1.5 million.
2004: As part of that reform, the group pushed for broader use of certain construction management standards, such as holding the construction management held responsible for costs that exceed a guaranteed maximum price, and having management selected for quality as well as price.
1998: ASM won passage of a “prompt pay” law that speeds payment on public projects by requiring state agencies to pay contractors in 30 days instead of 45 for certain projects.
1996: ASM and a coalition won reform to the Massachusetts Lien Law, expanding the scope of lien protection; the revised law covered more types of projects and extended the time limit for claiming a mechanics lien, among other things.
1990-2004: Successfully fought off attacks on Massachusetts Filed Sub Big Law, which allows subcontractors to compete directly for contracts on public building projects.
