The "Best of the Best" in Merit Shop construction

As open-shop contractors, we don't spend a lot of time touting the quality of our work. In fact, our ABC chapter has one event each year dedicated to celebrating the cutting-edge work our members do. That event, the Excellence in Construction Awards (EICA) dinner, will be held on Wednesday, November 20 at 6:00 pm at the Westin Hotel in Waltham. Mass. Broadcasters Hall of Fame member Gary LaPierre will again serve as master of ceremonies. The awards are the culmination of a rigorous process that begins when ABC member companies submit some of the best work they have done in the past year. Those projects are reviewed by an independent panel of judges, who select Eagle, Merit, Spirit, Safety and Green awards in a variety of construction categories. We hope you will join us to celebrate the best the Massachusetts construction industry has to offer. And if you didn't enter this year, we'll hope you'll start thinking about entering for 2014. Unlike construction unions, we don't have the money, the political clout, the time - or frankly the inclination - to promote our accomplishments on a full-time basis. But like the unions, our contractors do very good work - and they also provide superior value. Perhaps we can learn from construction unions when it comes to doing a better job of promoting our work. Coming to celebrate some of the very best construction projects in Massachusetts and support the open shop contractors who built them on November 20 would be a good place to start. Tom Descoteaux is chairman of ABC-Mass. Chapter, Woburn, Mass.