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61 B U S I N E S S P RO F I L E S B U S I N E S S P R O F I L E S S P E C I A L A D V E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N Under son Jim Sargent, who became president, and son-in-law Ralph Leonard, who became board chair, the company diversified beyond highway earthwork into utilities and environmental work. By the time Superintendent Scott Blanchard joined as a surveyor fresh out of the University of Maine in 1986, H.E. Sargent carried a particular weight. "If you had an H.E. Sargent hat on," Blanchard said, "you were something." In 1988, the Sargent family sold H.E. Sargent to Razel, a large French construction firm. e company was later sold to a German company, Bilfinger Berger, and its St. Louis subsidiary, Fru-Con Construction. Decision-making moved thousands of miles away. Equipment purchases required months of approval. e culture that had been built over six decades began to pull apart. "You lose a piece of your identity when that happens," said Eric Ritchie, who is now Sargent's president & CEO. "ere's an extra meaning where you can walk down the hallway and talk to the guy who owns the company, and you know that he came from a background similar to you, versus answering to a faceless entity somewhere overseas." In 1991, Herbert E. Sargent's grandson, Herb R. Sargent, made a decision. He was 27 years old, a superintendent at H.E. Sargent, and unhappy with what the company had become under foreign ownership. He left the company, went home, and started a com- pany called Sargent & Sargent out of a spare bedroom. He had no equipment, no employees, and an idea. His new company, Sargent & Sargent's first major job was a Walmart site in Bangor, a $3 million project he secured against longer-established competition by promising the developer plainly: "If you hire me, I'll lay awake and worry about it and you won't have to." He called Kevin Gordon, a former colleague, and assembled a crew. When the project fell behind on curbing, Herb and Gordon rented a light plant and worked through the night. at became the ethos of the company. Whatever it takes. By 2005, Sargent & Sargent had grown into a respected, lean operation, and Fru-Con was ready to sell H.E. Sargent. What fol- lowed was described within the company as a guppy swallowing a whale: a roughly 100-person contractor acquiring a firm three to four times its size. Herb R. Sargent put everything he had on the line. e deal closed on July 21, 2005. e day after, Herb R. gathered the office staff on the front steps of the company's Bennoch Road headquarters. e message, recalled by those in the room, was direct: the owner was back in the store. Decision-making was no longer going to St. Louis or Germany. e office existed to serve the field, not the other way around. Herbert E. Sargent, the founder, was 99 years old and still alive to see the company return to family ownership. Herb R. visited him the morning after closing. e elder Herb did not say much, but later told his son Jim he could have gone out and danced a jig. e two companies came together under the single name Sargent Corporation later that fall. Eight years after the reunion, Herb R. Sargent made the decision that now defines the company as much as anything built in the field. In 2013, he sold Sargent Corporation to its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, crediting workers' prior years of service from the start so that ownership meant something imme- diately. A sale to another outside company was not on the table. e ESOP checked every box: stability in culture, a tax structure that allowed the company to reinvest, and a way for the people doing the work to share in what they built. "at's one of the things I value most about employee-ownership," said Tasha Gardner, the company's vice president of finance and CFO. "It creates continuity, shared responsibility, and a real benefit for the people who are putting in the work every day." e plan has grown well beyond early projections. Workers in their 20s are building retirement balances that few in their position at other construction companies can match. What began as a suc- cession solution has become the defining structure of the company. "I've never seen a business model like it," said Ritchie. "It allows for wealth to be distributed throughout the company, not just to the owner. What Herb set up has set us up for success, and now we're all about sustaining that going into the next century." Today, Sargent employs more than 650 employee-owners across New England and the Mid- Atlantic, operating in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina. In late 2025, the company acquired E.L. Vining & Son, a Farmington- based contractor, deepening its Western Maine presence. e com- pany is heading into its second century with what management has described as the largest project backlog in its history. e April 10 celebration intro- duced the Herbert E. Sargent Founder's Award, a new recog- nition honoring the character and example the company traces back to its founder and its Core Purpose & Values. It comes with a financial bonus and funds for the recipient to donate to a charity of their choosing. e first recipient was Kevin Gordon, the company's Workforce Advancement director. Gordon answered a phone call from Herb Sargent in 1992 and has spent more than thirty years helping to train the next generation of Sargent workers, building the Sargent Construction Academy, a program that now prepares employee-own- ers, starting on their first day on a job site, for years of field experience and career growth. "ere are not many companies that make it to 100 years, and even fewer that do more than just make it; they keep adapting and thriv- ing," said Ritchie. "e company has changed with the times, but it has kept the kind of people who are willing to meet challenges head-on, work together, and keep building something that lasts." Herb R. Sargent has written a company history, "e Hard Work Starts Today," drawn from his grandfather's journals and the accounts of the people who built H.E. Sargent from a single truck. A century in, the company is still approaching it the same way. For more information, visit sargent.us. l For more Sargent stories, find the company podcast on Spotify, Sargent: On Track Podcast. P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F S A R G E N T Above: Photos from the Sargent 100 Celebration