Cianbro started in 1949 as Cianchette Brothers, a Maine excavation outfit, and became Cianbro Corporation in 1970. It is now one of the largest employee-owned construction companies in the country, operating open shop across building, industrial and manufacturing, infrastructure, modular manufacturing, and power and energy markets. Subsidiaries include A/Z Corporation, R.C. Stevens and Starcon. The firm has a long record on marine and heavy civil work in the Piscataqua River region, including the Dry Dock No. 3 caisson replacement and seat repairs and the Berth 11 structural repairs at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, both completed in 2020, and the 2,800-foot Sarah Mildred Long Bridge replacement delivered under CM/GC in 2018. Other work includes the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland and repairs to the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C.
Carl Cianchette started a construction operation under his own name in 1946. By 1951 The Cianchette Brothers, Inc. had landed a subcontract at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine and added three bulldozers, a low-bed truck, a power shovel and thirteen Ford trucks. Heavy industrial and marine capability arrived in 1967 with the acquisition of E.C. Snodgrass. In 1969 the company assembled a 400-foot crane at Bath Iron Works rated for 300-ton lifts, considered at the time the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Ownership changed hands slowly and on purpose. In 1979 the Cianchette brothers began transferring the company to team members using profits allocated through the profit-sharing plan. That transfer completed in 2003, when Cianbro became 100 percent employee-owned, and the firm now describes itself as the fourth largest 100 percent employee-owned construction company in the United States. Peter “Andi” Vigue became president in 2009 and CEO and president of The Cianbro Companies in 2018.
Acquisitions built out the rest of the group. Starcon International joined in 2010, an industrial and mechanical contractor serving refining, chemical, natural gas processing and food and beverage plants. A/Z Corporation followed in 2019, a Connecticut engineering-construction firm covering design, construction, maintenance and energy management. R. C. Stevens came in 2022, a Florida design-builder, construction manager and general contractor working in commercial, financial, healthcare and process manufacturing.
The quality and safety credentials are specific rather than general. Cianbro’s QA/QC program is built on ISO 9001 with inspection and test plans, daily quality tracking reports and lessons learned, and the industry certifications it names are ASME S and U, NBIC R, SSPC QP-1 and QP-2, AISC and PCI. The company developed the full-body construction harness and adopted 100 percent tie-off in 1987, joined OSHA’s Star Mobile Workforce Voluntary Protection Program in 2017, and was recognized by Associated Builders and Contractors as an Accredited Quality Contractor in 2018. Its Beyond Zero safety program dates to 2013, and a company-wide Lean push began in 2016.
Beyond the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and bridge work already noted, the project list runs to a replacement facility for Maine Veterans’ Homes in Augusta with joint venture partner VJS Construction, the North Hero-Grand Isle drawbridge in Vermont, the Puritan Medical expansion in Orlinda, Tennessee, Wharf Phase 2 in Washington, D.C., the Alexandria Bay land port of entry modernization in New York, Cross Town Energy Storage in Gorham, Maine, and dam canal wall and headgate pier repairs for Lockhart Power in South Carolina. Project teams run Primavera P6, Procore, Touchplan and HCSS.
Offices sit in Pittsfield, Portland, Falmouth and Brewer, Maine; Bloomfield, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; and Greenville, South Carolina, with deepwater marine facilities at Morgan’s Wharf in Baltimore and Ricker’s Wharf in Portland.
