Life@Gilbane

Serving the Community

Gilbane Cares

At Gilbane, we don’t just report to offices and jobsite trailers; these are the places where we live and work. All of our offices across the country and globe feel like home, and we want to reach out to our communities as a family would reach out to their neighbors. Passion for community service permeates all aspects of our work, and we consider it a pleasure to be community leaders encouraging others with our example to make a commitment to the greater good. All our teams are continually looking for outlets that allow them to align themselves with a local cause that resonate with them personally.

Gilbane volunteers
The Rhode Island team and their families visited a rural area of Guatemala as part of a volunteer service trip earlier this year. Spending time with the tenants/patients of these facilities was one of the highlights of this volunteer trip.

Giving Back is Part of our DNA

Caring has always been a core value at Gilbane, and it extends far beyond the walls of our offices. We are blessed to have made countless community partnerships over the years, many of which span decades.

United Way

United Way Logo

When we say once you become a part of the Gilbane family, you are a member for life, it isn’t just lip service – in 1956, Bill Gilbane Sr. served as Captain and chair of the 1956 United Way Campaign in Rhode Island, which raised over $2 million. Nearly 70 years later, Gilbane and the United Way continue to work together to improve lives in communities around the world, and in 2018 our employees contributed over $500,000 to the United Way.

United Way
Bill Gilbane, Sr right – Captain/chair of the 1956 United Way campaign in Rhode Island

ACE Mentoring

ACE Logo

The ACE Mentor Program of America encourages youth to consider STEM-related careers. Volunteers from Gilbane work directly with students as mentors, often staying in touch with students into college and inviting the top ACE alumni to join Gilbane as summer interns.  Alum Kevin Benetez, now a graduate of Don Bosco Cristo Rey high school and student at Howard University, said of his experience in the program: “I came in pretty shy. My image of construction came from my family and the trades. (My mentor) Jay Johnson helped open doors for me and see it as a viable career.”

ACE Mentoring

Rebuilding Together

Rebuilding Together Logo

Gilbane Cleveland volunteers came together recently to complete revitalization projects with Rebuilding Together Northeast Ohio. The team painted a mural and a basketball court, beautified a community center and created a senior drop-off area at the Lee Road Baptist Church. Across the nation, Gilbane employees partner with Rebuilding Together, a non-profit organization with the goal of preserving affordable homeownership and revitalizing neighborhoods through free home repairs and modifications for neighbors in need. Gilbane has been partnering with Rebuilding Together for many years in more than seven different cities, giving their time, effort and resources to transform homes for those who need it the most.

Gilbane Cares photo

Striving for Economic Inclusion

Gilbane is committed to using our best in class internal training and technological innovations to strengthen not only our employees, but everyone we work with. We encourage woman-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned and small business participation on all our projects – regardless of funding requirements. Our partnership goes beyond simply leveraging these organizations as subcontractors and suppliers; we are committed to strengthening these organizations because we have the bandwidth that many companies do not and we want to share that with every community we touch. We offer technical and leadership development programs, as well as formal and informal mentoring, to our diverse subcontractor community.

Yvette Stevens
At Gilbane, strengthening our communities is not done simply through financial contributions, but from offering our vast resources to every local subcontractor we bring onto a job site, to ensure that we offer every community, and their workers, a brighter future.
Yvette Stevens, PE, PMP
Director of Economic Inclusion and Community Affairs

Rebuilding Our Communities

Gregg Stawarz leads pre-construction efforts in Gilbane’s Pittsburgh office working on healthcare, higher education projects, and more. But nothing gives him more satisfaction than the work Gilbane enables him to do helping homeowners in need. His first chance to join the GRS Reconstruction Services (GRS) team came at the end of 2012 when 130 Gilbane employees helped 6,500 families in New York that were affected by Super Storm Sandy. Together they restored gas, water, and electrical services to the residents of the Rockaways in Queens allowing them to return to their homes with heat, hot water, and power. His second chance came in September 2018 when a surge in natural gas pressure in the Merrimack Valley outside of Boston caused several explosions and fires, ultimately leaving 8,000 families without natural gas service. The team raced dropping temperatures working tirelessly to install new gas lines, furnaces, hot water tanks and ovens before winter arrived. While the work is demanding and the days are long, Gregg wouldn’t trade his experience helping displaced families for anything. We are incredibly proud of the work Gregg and so many others like him do in service of those in need, a shining example that at Gilbane, we are truly building more than buildings.

Gregg Stawarz
It is immensely rewarding to see families return to their homes. The people I’ve met and the relationships I’ve formed are priceless. These situations give me a chance to prove myself.
Gregg Stawarz
Special Olympics Volunteers