Wilmington, MA JUNE 25, 2008 — Robert L. Delhome, President of Charter Environmental, Inc. (Charter), was recently honored by the U.S. Small Business Administration with its top award, the 2008 Massachusetts Small Business Person of the Year.
The Small Business Person of the Year award is presented annually to a small business person or persons who exemplify excellence in entrepreneurship. Robert Delhome was judged on seven basic criteria: staying power, growth in number of employees, increase in sales/and or unit volume, current and past financial reports, innovativeness of product or service, response to adversity, and evidence of contributions to community-oriented projects. Eva Marie D’Antuono, small business deputy, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, nominated Delhome for this award.
“Mr. Delhome has created an environment at Charter Environmental that has resulted in a highly motivated and dedicated staff that continually display a can do attitude,” said D’Antuono. “This attitude together with their business objective of always honoring project contractual requirements and even exceeding expectations has resulted in a project delivery performance track record defined by integrity and absolute reliability.”
“I am excited to have been selected by the SBA for this award,” said Delhome. “I am grateful to the Corps for their nomination and continued commitment to small businesses. I am especially grateful to Eva Marie D’Antuono in the Corps’s Small Business Office. Ms. D’Antuono is committed to ensuring businesses like Charter achieve great success and are afforded equal opportunities for Federal contracts.”
Charter, a heavy civil and environmental contractor, was established in 1997 with two employees and $300 in seed capital. Charter specializes in marine construction, remediation, ecosystem restoration, waste management, and civil construction. Charter is headquartered in Wilmington, MA, and maintains regional offices in Lowell, MA and Eliot, ME. Charter maintains an equipment yard with more than $10 million in inventory at Eliot, ME. In addition, Charter has an affiliate company, AmeriTech, which provides waste management and transportation services. Charter services commercial, municipal and Federal clients including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment (AFCEE), the U.S. Navy, Raytheon Corp., Centex Construction, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Worcester Business Development Corp., to name a few. Charter has grown into a $31 million, 112 employee powerhouse in the industry.
Recognized by Engineering News Record (ENR) for the past five years as one of the Top 200 Engineering Firms, Charter is known throughout the industry for their dedicated and hard working staff, complete flexibility with their customers, a corporate culture that fosters good corporate citizenship, and collaboration with all project stakeholders including other contractors, the community, regulators, and their clients to create solutions that ensure quality. Charter’s continued success can also be attributed to their willingness to evaluate all practical work processes and corroborate more competitive pricing to guarantee customer satisfaction.
Before founding Charter, Delhome consulted with SCORE, an SBA resource partner, about the feasibility of his plan which has proven to be solid. Once established, Delhome enrolled in SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program which is intended to help socially and economically disadvantaged business owners compete in the federal procurement marketplace. Charter graduated from the program in 2007 after having won 22 contracts worth $13 million.
“Charter Environmental has been one of SBA’s star performers,” said SBA Director Nelson. “Bob Delhome wisely created systems and an infrastructure that can support both government contracts and private sector work so that his transition from the 8a program has been seamless. SBA is proud to have been part of Charter’s phenomenal success.”
Mr. Delhome was honored at an awards luncheon hosted by Cape Business Publishing in Hyannis on Thursday, May 22, 2008.