A Vermont Employee-Owned Company
ABOUT ENGINEERS CONSTRUCTION, INC
Engineers Construction, Inc. (ECI) is a 100% employee-owned heavy civil contractor built on safety, quality, and integrity. Since 1965, ECI has taken on some of the toughest technical projects across New England—delivering results on aggressive schedules and in demanding conditions. Our employees take pride in every job, combining hands-on expertise, strong leadership, and attention to detail to ensure safe, high-quality work at a fair price.
With specialized teams in civil construction, concrete, paving, trenchless technologies, heavy civil construction and railroad, ECI continues to grow through the same values that started it all—commitment to our clients, our people, and doing the job right.
We are committed to high standards
CORPORATE MISSION AND PHILOSOPHY
At ECI, our mission is to serve our clients with quality work at a fair price. Safety, quality, and integrity are a priority on our projects.
We believe quality work and safe workplaces are achieved through leadership, planning, safe practices, and attention to detail.
SENIOR LEADERSHIP
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ECI IN NUMBERS
200+
Active Employees
7
Licensed Professional Engineers
$207,959 donated to local charities since 2016
Our 2025 annual employee charitable giving raise $37,495 and was distributed amongst 4 charities:
- The Classic Mike Loyer Foundation
- Ronald McDonald House
- Josh Pollata House
- Lund Center
Our employee clothing sales raised an additional $11,201 for Make-A-Wish Vermont.
ECI Code of Conduct
These 13 statements serve as a basis for ECI's decision making, goal setting, and discipline.
1. Strive to maintain a positive and professional image of ECI to our employees, our clients, venders, subcontractors, and the public.
2. Speak and act supportively of ECI, as a company, and of our workers.
3. Be prompt – Start on time (work, appointments, projects, etc.)
4. Don’t over-promise or under-deliver
5. Respect the property of others
6. Work to VOSHA, OSHA, FRA, & ECI safety standards
7. Work in an environmentally conscientious manner
8. Drive safely, defensively, and courteously
9. Maintain cleanliness and condition of vehicles and equipment
10. Maintain respectful behavior whenever one is working, driving a company vehicle, or wearing the company logo. You are always representing this company
11. Strive for restraint, discretion, and integrity
12. Maintain confidentiality of insider information learned about ECI or about our clients
13. Promote the CODE!
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SAFETY OVERVIEW
We strive to maintain a culture of safe work practices to protect our workers, the public, and the environment.
– Ken Pidgeon, Chair of the Board of Directors
Safety Begins Every Morning at the Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) Briefing: Every morning each project crew performs a job hazard analysis (JHA) to discuss and document the daily work plan, assess and address the job hazards, identify the necessary personal protective equipment, and review the emergency response plan.
Friday Morning Corporate Safety Meetings: Every Friday morning all employees attend a virtual safety meeting. This meeting is led by CEO Ben Dow and the Safety Department. Each week a different safety topic is discussed, company announcements are shared, and a presentation is made by an ECI employee on a current or recently completed project that they were involved in.
Ben Dow
Scott was the Co-Owner of ECI from 2004 to 2024. Scott retired from ECI when the company became a 100% Employee Owned Employee Stock Ownership Program in 2024.
Memberships:
Member – Paving Association of Vermont
Member – Associated General Contractors of Vermont
Background:
Since graduating from high school over 30 years ago, Scott has been working in various capacities at ECI, particularly the paving division. Prior to becoming an owner, he had been involved in the management of ECI for over a decade as the company-wide dispatcher and operation head of AC Paving.
Ben Heath
Ken was the Co-Owner of ECI from 2004 to 2024. Ken is now a part time ECI employee providing Geotechnical and Structural Engineering Services on ECI projects.
Education:
BS Civil Engineering – University of Vermont (1984)
MS Civil Engineering – University of New Hampshire (1986)
Professional Registrations & Affiliations:
Registered Professional Engineer – VT, MA, CT
Member – American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association
Member – American Society of Civil Engineers
Member – Board of Advisors to the Civil & Environmental Engineer Department at UVM
Publications: Read more >
Alan Pidgeon - Company Founder
Alan was a co-founder of Engineers Construction, Inc. formed in 1965 and he remained active in the company until health conditions slowed him down in 2018. Alan passed away on June 14, 2020.
Education:
BS Civil Engineering – University of Vermont (1960)
General Background:
Alan’s career in construction started as an engineer for the Vermont Agency of Transportation in 1957. In 1964, he left to form Engineers Inc. of Vermont (EIV), a civil design consulting firm. In 1965, Alan and Craig formed Engineers Construction, Inc. (ECI) to operate in tangent with EIV. Both firms continued to operate as sister companies until 1984 when EIV was bought out by the chief engineer of the firm. Alan served as president of ECI until his sons purchased the company in May 2004.
OUR HISTORY
ECI was founded in 1965 by engineers Alan Pidgeon and Craig Butterfield to provide construction services alongside their engineering firm, Engineers Incorporated of Vermont (EIV). The company’s early years included forming AC Paving, named after Alan and Craig. In the 1970s, Craig took ownership of a Florida paving company while Alan retained ECI and EIV in Vermont. EIV was later sold in the 1980s and now provides inspection services for ECI projects. In 2005, Alan’s sons, Ken and Scott Pidgeon, became equal partners and expanded ECI’s services, fleet, and management team. In 2024, they sold ECI to its employees through a 100% Employee-Owned ESOP.
In 1998, ECI faced an impossible challenge: install 96 miles of conduit along the New England Central Railroad — with no rail plow and only one month to invent a solution. What followed was a story of bold innovation, sleepless nights, and engineering ingenuity that led to the creation of ECI’s custom Rail Plow — an invention so unique it earned a U.S. patent and completed the project in record time. Read more about the Rail Plow Story to discover how determination, teamwork, and creative problem-solving turned a near-impossible task into one of ECI’s proudest achievements.
THE RAIL PLOW STORY
Background
The year was 1998. Ken Pidgeon had just returned to the family construction business to join his father Alan and brother Scott. Ken had previously worked as a registered professional engineer at a geotechnical consulting firm in the Boston area.
First Challenge
One of the first challenges that Alan assigned to Ken was to develop a way to plow innerduct conduit along the New England Central Railroad. ECI had just been awarded a 96-mile-long project and ECI did not own a Rail Plow. ECI had about one month to come up with a design – and build it. The criteria was tough: two 1.25-inch-id innerduct, minimum depth 48 inches, two 3,000 hp diesel-electric locomotives for pulling power, and 96 miles of conduit to install before cold weather sets in.
Solution
ECI had large track excavators and dozer plows. So, Ken reasoned, “why couldn’t we install a dozer plow attachment onto the end of an excavator boom.” The excavator provided the mass and structural capacity to weight down the plow and resist the huge pulling traction from the locomotive power. The excavator also provided a means to move the plow outward, inward, downward, and onto the rail car deck for travel.
Fabrication & Fit-up
Lots of fabrication, a hydraulic rotor attachment for the connection from the boom to the plow, additional ballast weight on the car, structural reinforcing of the car, tiedowns for the excavator, and we’re ready to go. The project was an interesting challenge for ECI’s mechanics and fabricators.
Would It Really Work?
Ken never doubted it, even after a major structural failure on the second day of production work. After 3 days of repair, the crew was back in production and didn’t look back. The biggest challenge was dealing with the heavy rains from one of the wettest summers on record.
Production was the Proof
The average daily pay length production was about 10,500 feet. The rail plowing portion was complete in 40 nights (work was done on 10-hour night shifts to avoid train traffic). The single best night was nearly 20,000 linear feet. The project was a huge success for ECI, the client, and the railroad.
US Patent #6,193,440
Was the rail plow something that could be patented? Apparently the US Patent office thought so and awarded patent #6,193,440 to Ken and Alan Pidgeon.
Later Projects
The era of rail plow work had largely gone by at about the time that ECI built their Rail Plow. The dot.com bust occurred, the telecommunication industry changed considerably, and improvements in fiber optic technology meant that more data could be transmitted on less fiber. However, ECI’s Rail Plow was put into action for several other projects including railroad signal wire installation on the NECR, a fiber optic network from Whitehall, NY to Burlington, VT, a fiber ring around Chittenden County, VT, and a telecommunications project in Worcester, MA.