Respondent’s Name: Ed Silva Company: Vantage Builders, Inc. What was your greatest professional accomplishment in 2015? In 2015 Vantage Builders celebrated its 15 year anniversary, and I could not be more proud of that milestone. We’ve been very fortunate during that time to have worked with many of the top companies and landlords in New England, and we expect to do the same for at least the next 15 years. In 2015, we continued to strengthen our team, while also adding a bit more structure to the firm, which will enable us to better support our clients. We have a new management team and an extremely talented team of employees. We also launched a new website as we kick off our next 15 years. What was your most notable project, deal, or transaction in 2015? I hate to sound like a politician, but this one may be too difficult to answer! We had many interesting deals this year and it would be difficult to pick one or two. What makes it difficult is that we had such variety in our projects during 2015. We were working in different vertical markets, on smaller renovation projects up to ground-up construction. More so than in other years, there wasn’t an over-arching theme to the projects. It makes it harder to compare the projects and pick the most notable one. What are your predictions for commercial real estate in 2016? Vantage Builders has been in operation for 15 years now. And in that time we’ve seen boom periods and, unfortunately, bust periods. These market fluctuations tend to encourage certain types of projects, for example when funding is tight we see an increase in renovation projects rather than new construction, which makes sense. But in 2015 we saw projects that you’d see in all types of markets: smaller renovation work, landlords requesting common area improvements, new construction, everything. And we expect to see the trend continue throughout 2016.