Small Business Saturday: Mom Rachel
Our latest Apple Mom for Small Business Saturday is Rachel Barese, a mom to an thirteen month old adorable little boy Ryan. Rachel grew up in Suffern, currently resides in Mahwah, NJ, and has two offices in Rockland and Orange Counties. She is the President of Civil Tec Engineering & Surveying PC which is a small civil engineering and land surveying firm with two offices in the Hudson Valley, one in Chester and one in Suffern. We do subdivisions, site plans, utility, grading and drainage design, stormwater management services, title surveys, topographic and boundary surveys, construction stakeout and more. Our services are focused on the Lower Hudson Valley with the majority of our work occurring in Rockland and Orange Counties.
When did you start your business? I formed Civil Tec Engineering & Surveying PC in October 2012 with my business partners, Larry Torro and Joe Haller.
How did the idea come about? Joe, Larry and I started Civil Tec Engineering & Surveying PC with the goal of becoming a Woman’s Business Enterprise and a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise since there is a market for engineering and surveying work for minority owned companies. For all construction work that is funded by state or federal government, there is a mandate that a certain percentage of that work be granted to women and minority owned businesses. For example, the new Tappan Zee Bridge is partly funded through the federal government so they require a percentage of all work be completed by women and minority owned businesses (not limited only to engineering/surveying services).
What is special about your business? Women are a minority in engineering and surveying, so having a woman owned engineering and surveying firm is special in itself. I was lucky to have a great female boss early in my career who set a wonderful example of how to fit into a male dominated field. Aside from that, we have a great staff who really can cater to the needs of our clients and provide a quality product.
How do you manage having your own business and motherhood? I am lucky to be able to work from home part-time. My hours can be flexible to a degree (outside of meetings) which helps a lot.
Walk us through a typical day: I have a great commute of only 5-7 minutes. I start my day by checking emails while my partner sends our field crew out to survey a site. My partners and I then have a meeting to go over ongoing projects, proposals for new projects, and miscellaneous items. Then I get to work designing site plans and subdivisions. I do layouts, sewer design, water design, and stormwater design, as well as a variety of other things. I vary between CAD (Computer Aided Design) drafting and writing reports. I also often meet clients either in our office or out on a jobsite. I come home at 5 and often work for an hour or so after Ryan goes to bed. About 4 nights out of the month I will have night meetings when I have to represent a project at a local Planning Board meeting. That is when it’s hard balancing work and family since it’s so hard to come home for dinner and then turn around to leave again.
If you had to give one piece of advice to a mom wanting to start her own business what would it be? The biggest thing is to love what you do. It’s not always fun or easy so it should be something that’s really worth it. Another important thing to keep in mind is that starting a business is not easy and you will not make money for a while so you have to have a safety net in place. At some point it will all start to come together, but you have to be willing to manage in the meantime. This can be hard with a young family, but there are so many benefits that it’s worth it in the end.
Rachel’s Business is located at:
67 Brookside Avenue Chester, NY 10918 845-610-3621
29 N. Airmont Road Suite 25 Suffern, NY 10901 845-547-2241
www.facebook.com/pages/Civil-Tec
https://www.linkedin.com/company/civil-tec
Will manage somehow.
flowerPi
With the gas worth an estimated $670,000, the firm would certainly shed more than $800,000.
The above discussed hosts are amongst the top rated
and also highly suggested business.