For local firms, Baltimore bridge reconstruction is personal

At the entrance to the now-deserted road leading to Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, there’s a roadside memorial to the six construction workers who perished when the bridge collapsed in late March after it was hit by a massive barge. Janet Groncki stood in front of six giant crosses — each topped by a hard hat and draped with pictures, flowers and steel-toed boots. 

“I mean, it’s so touching to me,” she murmured.

Groncki is CEO of Sunrise Safety Services, which does traffic control at highway construction sites and makes street signs. Everybody knows everybody in the Baltimore area’s road construction community. Groncki didn’t know the crew that died, but their company was one of her regular customers. She knows people there and grieved with them.

“It’s a good way to honor ‘em,” she said, looking at the crosses.

Back in her office, Groncki and her daughter, Tiffany Schrauder — who also works at Sunrise — reconstruct the day Key Bridge fell. Groncki drove over the bridge at the end of the day on March 25 just hours before the collapse.

“God said, ‘Here you go. You can go over one more time, Janet,’” she said.

The next morning, Groncki got a call from Tiffany: The bridge was down. Tiffany was also on the phone with the company in charge of shutting off traffic to the bridge. They needed signs, barriers and electronic billboards. Immediately.

“If we didn’t have it in stock to make it new and we had it out on the rack already used, we grabbed it, just to get it out there to get the job done,” she explained.

Janet Groncki said it ended up being a pretty big job for Sunrise — several hundred thousand dollars.  She’d like to be part of the reconstruction work, even though it looks like the new bridge would only need 20 to 30 signs. A big job would involve closer to a hundred.

“Even if it’s not a huge job, it would be an honor to be a part of it,” she told me.

Groncki won’t be part of the initial phase of the bridge reconstruction. Huge national and international firms will bid on that, and then subcontract work to smaller firms like Sunrise.

Jon Crocker at the University of Maryland’s business school figures at least a quarter of the bridge work will be done by Baltimore-area firms. “Just because they’re here and available to do the work and it would be more efficient to hire them,” he explained.

Crocker said the Maryland Transportation Authority, which is in charge of the project, is requiring that 26% of the work be done by what it calls disadvantaged firms — including women and minority-owned companies. He added that they’re typically local.