BuildingEnergy Access Spotlight Interview: B. Alpha Construction
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT: B. Alpha Construction
BuildingEnergy Access is a NESEA initiative to support the work of WMBEs (women and minority-owned business enterprises) by connecting them with the resources of the NESEA community. Each month, we'll introduce a participating company to the wider NESEA community through a spotlight interview.
We recently sat down with Mark Tajima and Yamil Brito of B. Alpha Construction, minority-owned and operated commercial insulation and construction business based in Chicopee, MA to discuss their business and their participation in the BuildingEnergy Access program.
Ian Reed: To begin, would you share a quick company description?
Mark Tajima: Yeah, sure. B Alpha Construction is a building performance installation company. Our team has over 50 years of combined experience in energy efficiency. The partnership of B Alpha Construction, has worked on over 6,000 weatherization projects, even though we've only been in business for three years.
IR: Wow!
MT: We work on residential, multifamily, commercial, industrial, and municipal projects and are active in both retrofit and new construction. We are a Mass Save contractor, and we excel at helping people navigate the various Mass Save programs to leverage the maxim incentives and tax credits. In 2024, B Alpha helped customers obtain over 1.5 million in incentives.
And Yamil and I were just talking, a few minutes earlier, and told me that in the three years that we've been in business, we have done $6 million worth of work and brought $4 million worth of incentives to our customers.
IR: Some pretty strong numbers there. That's awesome.
MT: Lastly, as a minority business enterprise, we are mission-driven and mission-oriented, focusing on helping small businesses, nonprofits, houses of worship, schools, and municipalities. Our diverse experience and history of delivering a high quality installation on time and on budget helps us to consistently exceed expectations of building owners, vendors, and contractors. Not all insulation contractors are created equal…And that's my elevator pitch. <laugh>
IR: I like it. You touched on it a little bit there, but you mentioned it being a “mission-driven” company. How would you describe your mission?
MT: Yeah. I would say that, as a minority business enterprise, we are aware of some of the challenges of working in this space, in this day and age. We want to spread and share the blessings that we've had; bringing a lot of the knowledge and experience from our previous lives,previous businesses, to the table. And, we're always looking for partners that look like us. It's not all altruistic, you know, we work with a lot of folks who traditionally have been left behind, in terms of the building efficiency improvement world, and that happens to be schools, houses of worship, and other nonprofits. They haven't had the money to do these upgrades over the decades, and so their buildings tend to need more work than the typical commercial business. Which is not to say that we aren’t doing regular commercial work; we certainly are doing a lot of that too. But I'd say a good 40% of our work is in the nonprofit world.
IR: Nice. That's awesome. I didn't realize it was that high of a proportion. That's really cool.
MT: It's probably pretty close to that when you count municipalities.
IR: That leads me pretty organically into my next question: Is there a project or initiative you're working on they're particularly proud of?
MT: Yamil, do you have one in mind?
Yamil Brito: Yeah. Well, we are currently in the middle of three school projects, so… <laugh>
IR: That'll do it. <laugh>
YB: One of those contracts is currently about to be signed, so I’m not sure how much I should say about it. But when this one closes, it's a project that touches close to all our hearts. We are right on the edge of closing a contract with the City of Holyoke, for another school, and potentially some additional buildings in their town. And that is very exciting. I grew up in Holyoke and have a lot of background there. Joel (A Co-Founder / Partner of B Alpha) grew up in Holyoke, so it’s the same thing with him, having that connection to the city. Mark worked for many years in Holyoke. We're currently located in Chicopee, just over the border. So, we're all very excited to do that work, and we all feel very connected with that project and community. And we're doing that project with Green Communities, so that's one of those projects we're really excited about.
We’ve got a couple town halls that we're currently doing, and those are always exciting.
MT: We do, yeah. That town hall is another Green Communities collaboration, this time in the Amherst Hill towns. We've worked on the building for over a year and a half, and it's finally coming to fruition. It’s looking good. The clients were able to get a hundred percent incentive on an almost $150,000 project.
IR: Wow. No complaints there. 
MT: That’s what we do! We often help folks patch together these hybrid funding projects. You know, we get some money from Green Communities, we get some money from the utilities, we get some money from community climate funds. There's a lot of different sources that we and our partners are able to help bring to the table. So, we're excited about that.
IR: That's huge. Being able to navigate those different sources of funding and keeping track of the changing funding environment is a huge value add on top of the construction services that you're offering.
MT: I mean, in this day and age, Ian, with all the stuff that's been going on at the federal level, we’re seeing programs being cut to zero and layoffs, and this and that. Surprisingly, so far we have managed to insulate ourselves from the impact of that. Certainly, some of the tax credits that are going away, will have a slight impact on our business. But, so far, we, and a lot of the other companies in Massachusetts who do what we do, are still in pretty good territory.
IR: That's really good to hear. You mentioned recently expanding into Connecticut; are you finding that it's been an easy transition to work over there too, or is it a completely different ball game versus working in Massachusetts?
YB: "Completely different ball game"? Yeah, that’s about right. They're still kind of developing their programs and their rebates, and so we're kind on the front end of that. So we are being patient. Mark is great at understanding the programs and kind of the different roads that each program starts creating. That's really what we focus on following, right? It’s important for the customer to be aware of where the money and the funding is coming from. A lot of that is still in early development, but we're trying to keep up with it and we’re still expanding there. I think Mark spent at least half his time down in Connecticut the last couple weeks. Is that right?
MT: Yeah, absolutely. From New London to Greenwich, almost, so we pretty much cover the entire state.
IR: Yup, that's most of it. <laugh>
MT: <laugh> Yeah. They have a lot of houses of worship, a lot of schools, you know, chambers of commerce, community clubs and those sorts of places. It's a different state with slightly different ways of managing the program, but it's the same utilities, and so they're trying to find commonalities and trying to grow on the successes that they've had in the Massachusetts market.
IR: Are you looking to cover more territory or, now that you've expanded, are you looking to stabilize a little bit? How do you see things developing? Could you talk a little about your long term ambitions for the company?
YB: I will say, roughly the next year to three years, we are definitely looking to find stable ground a little bit. For a 3-year-old company, we’ve definitely been running flat out, from the very beginning, <laugh> so, it's been a lot of catch-up and trying to balance personal time and work life. Really the vision right now is stabilizing. It's not that we're done growing necessarily, it’s more about taking a moment to say, “let's figure out where we are and let's really hold our ground”.
We're super excited for Connecticut to kind of blow up, too. The goal of finding stable ground also means being able to take that on. We want to be ready for anything that comes through Connecticut and, you know, we are not shy of expanding in any direction, if it makes sense for us.
As for the vision beyond the three-year plan, we're not shy of going in any direction, because we're hoping to cover all of New England, you know? And we’re getting there, by staying where we are currently in the retrofit market and helping houses of worship and schools.
But beyond that – the new construction world, the commercial side of the business – there is a lot of work still going on, and that is a market that is so big. We are not there yet, and so far, we’re not hitting that market as far as we would like, but that is definitely in the vision in the future.
MT: Yamil sort of alluded to wanting to have some sort of controlled growth. Specifically, in our industry, the landscape is littered with companies that grew way too quickly and then collapsed, and almost took down an industry with them. We're growing; we feel like we've been growing at a fairly conservative rate. Really, at the bottom level, we just want to make sure that we are able to continue to deliver the highest quality of work. Our customers have come to expect the highest quality work, and great customer service from us and we don’t want that to ever change. We want to be able to be in control of that growth, so that when we grow a little bit, we also build new controls and systems. And so we're always looking at new ways to find efficiencies and improvements in our process and in our system. We feel like we have a good amount of space to grow just within those boundaries.
YB: We have been trying to control growth, but at the same time, we've had a lot of things rolling on to us, which is great. We're not complaining in any way, and I don't want that to ever feel like that's what I'm saying. We're thankful for what we've got in front of us and it’s been all about setting systems and finding the right people for the right decisions. It's always the most difficult thing, I think, for a business, other than funding.
The way we interview people, we try to make them very real, more like a conversation. We don’t want to start off and feel like we’re just sticking to this formal box, and this is where we're at, you know? Building on that idea, that's how we've been trying to treat every system. And I'll be honest, it hasn't worked like we thought it would, or as efficiently as we would like it to, because giving space for people to be able to think and come out, bring ideas out of their own perspective, is a lot harder than we were anticipating, or at least myself. I tell Mark, “Man, hiring people is so difficult.” <laugh>
IR: It really is
YB: I literally just told him that in our earlier conversation. I've worked with Mark for 16 years. I was 16 years old when I started. I never owned a business; nobody around me that I knew owned a business. So I was very green coming into this, learning about running a business and what it takes. There are so many different things to take on, different aspects, learning the numbers, learning how to read the reports, and coming up with all these different things. It’s a lot.
IR: It's a ton. An extra job on top of an already busy job, <laugh>.
YB: Right, right.
IR: That leads me to ask about your participation in our business development program, BuildingEnergy Access. How has that experience been, joining that cohort and working with the facilitators?
MT: When I first heard of the Building Energy Access program, two years ago, I immediately reached out and said, “Hey, we're interested in this.” And NESEA said, “oh, sorry, the first cohort in the program is for women-owned businesses” but they encouraged us to call again next year. And so, next year came around, we applied, and we are very excited about being able to participate in it.
It’s a pretty great group, a really nice mix of different businesses. I think folks can learn from us and we can learn from them. And, you know, I mentioned earlier about us wanting to “work with businesses that look like us”, and this is that group. We're really pleased about that.
We were concerned about how much work joining the cohort was going to be because we chronically don't have enough time to do things.
YB: I was concerned about how everything was gonna connect with this group and trying to have the time to get into every meeting and all, all the different, setup and conversations that we have to do for the program.
IR: I can totally understand that; when you're busy sometimes it can feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to set some aside for planning and developing the business. Billable work is always the priority, especially when you’re busy.
YB: Yes, but I am excited after the first meeting we had in person. I told Mark, “I'm very excited for this because it touches on a lot of the things that I'm already struggling with, you know?”
MT: And being able to work with folks from HELM is a super exciting. We've known about them for a while and have wanted to connect with them. It's really great how NESEA and HELM have formed this partnership and made the commitment to working with Minority Business Enterprises and Women-Owned Business Enterprises. It is really amazing. We wanted to be a part of that, you know? We're going to find a way to make it work. We have some serious needs, systemically. We've been growing, we've been doing pretty great work, I think, but we need better controls, reporting, and systems. A strategic plan.
Just to put it out there, I'm 65, and I’m going to be 66 this year. My two partners, Jamil and Joelle are both in their thirties. So, I think I might be older than both of them added together <laugh>. So, we need to talk about succession planning. You know, I don't know how long I'll be around. I hope I'll be working for five or 10 more years, but I don't really know.
YB: and I’m hoping the same <laugh>
MT: <laugh> Yeah. As much as they're ready to just jump into it, and have been just incredible partners, I want to make sure that the legacy I leave allows the business to continue thriving. I think that the BuildingEnergy Access Program, the consultants that have been helping us, are an important piece of that puzzle.
IR: Well, thank you both for joining me for a chat, it was really nice to get to know both of you.
YB: Thank you. You guys are amazing. It's an amazing organization. It's great working with NESEA, so I appreciate it.
IR: Happy to hear that; that's great.
MT: Thanks Ian. Nice to meet you. Enjoy the afternoon heat. <laugh>