Sweeney Drywall Finishes Corp. has been—for decades—servicing the greater Boston area. The company provides installation and services that include metal stud, drywall, firestop, ACT, rough and finish carpentry. The company has three specialty divisions:

• Firestopping (FM 4991-certified)
• Acoustical Ceilings
• Specialties (carpentry, retail fixtures, refrigerated coolers and building envelope siding systems)

Sweeney Drywall also has a sister company called JMK Doors, which is a supplier of doors, frames and hardware.

The family has been in construction since the 1940s. Dan Sweeney founded Sweeney Drywall in 1992. 

Its current president and owner, Dan Sweeney, has been involved in the trades since the ’80s. The company has several locations, but its main headquarters is located in Boxborough, Mass. The company is a full wall and ceiling subcontractor that specializes in the hospital/medical, retail/supermarket and institutional markets.

“We are a union shop and are signatory with the carpenters/laborers/painters unions,” Sweeney says. “Currently, we have more than 60 office/warehouse staff that supports 250 to 400 field personnel.”

A Decade Strong

According to Sweeney, the last 10 years have really pushed the company to the forefront of the local market—that success being driven by niche services and commitment to client relationships.

“Business has been steady,” Sweeney explains. “We have been fortunate to align ourselves with health care and institutions that have grown rapidly over the past decade.

“The last few years have been really robust and we haven’t noticed a drastic slowdown until recently. There seems to be less large-scale projects and more medium to small at the moment,” says Executive Vice President Greg Pelletier who is responsible for all operations related to field activities and workers/ Project Management/Warehouse/ prefabrication/specialties division. “The market is getting competitive, but we remain fortunate to have niche markets that keep us diverse as sectors slow, and our growth has allowed us to create a transitional mindset to adapt quickly to the needs of the market.”

When asked what his greatest achievement has been, Sweeney says two things:

• Securing the two Gregs. The two Gregs would be Greg Pelletier and Greg Hippert (both of whom W&C met recently at this year’s BUILD24 in Orlando, Fla).
• The longevity of relationships and employee retention. The company feels both elements provide the foundation of its success.

Motivation

For Sweeney, the most interesting aspect of the job is working with the company’s clients to establish long-term partnerships. However, he says that this perspective provides a new set of challenges on a daily basis but creates a synergistic approach that motivates the company to innovate within its experiences.

On the other side, Greg Hippert, executive vice president, who is responsible for all business development/estimating staff/firestop/ACT division says the hardest aspect is when clients’ visions shift with the industry.

“We establish to meet the needs of the general contractors, shift with them and, at times, it becomes challenging to enlist the employees needed to provide this change,” Hippert says. “However, we have a dedicated team that always finds a way to get things done, and it’s something that we remain focused on and most proud of.”

Sweeney says the company develops relationships with its clients that endure the challenges of the industry. He says its commitment to those relationships can require a selflessness of which Sweeney Drywall is proud.

“We have assembled a very talented workforce over the years, from office to field, and have been able to retain them with very little turnover,” Sweeney concludes. “We all work as a team and embrace the ‘Sweeney’ way.”

Project Profile: Brown University Performing Arts Center

Location: Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island
Owner: Brown University
General Contractor: Shawmut Design and Construction
Architect: REX

The Brown University community celebrates a new milestone for the arts: the opening of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center. The Lindemann offers new horizons for artistic exploration for Brown students and faculty, local community members and distinguished artists from around the world. More than an arts venue, The Lindemann is a state-of-the-art research laboratory that will qualitatively transform the Brown Arts ecosystem, stimulating new modes of art, encouraging innovative collaborations across knowledge domains and activating the creative imaginations of artistic communities at Brown.

With a one-of-a-kind approach to spatial, acoustic and technical flexibility, Brown University’s 101,000-square-foot center—designed by Joshua Ramus/REX—will inspire art making, enable new forms of artistic collaboration and serve as a hub for performance at Brown. 

The opening heralds a new era in Brown Arts history and arrives in concert with the extensive creative offerings of campus and Providence-based artists and arts organizations, as well as the renewed commitment to the arts by the Providence city government. Through transformative architectural forms and an infusion of soul-sustaining light, The Lindemann Performing Arts Center, newly located at the heart of Brown University’s campus, inspires an equally nimble, boundary-pushing, programmatic approach.

For this project, Sweeney Drywall was contracted to install metal stud framing, drywall, rough carpentry and door installation.

“The architect was intending to create a transformable space, which adapts to the acoustical needs of a performance,” Pelletier says. “The walls and floor of the space are operable and are able [to] expand or contract to accommodate [the] desired intimacy of the space. There [were] extreme levels of consideration for acoustics that, at times, required unique criteria in the wall and ceiling construction.”