Page 57 - Careers & Stuff 2021

PHIL PIERETTI
Phil Pieretti wanted a career change, and he got one. He went from sitting behind a bank of four computer monitors, making trades in the energy market, to sitting — part of the day, at least — in a noisy jobsite trailer at the DuPont Experimental Station.
“It was exactly what I was looking for,” Pieretti says. He’d focused on finance at Penn State, gone straight to work as a day trader, and then found, after four years, that he was in the wrong line of work.
“I may have focused a little too much on how much money I could make rather than how much I would enjoy what I do,” Pieretti says. “The job was interesting to an extent, but at the end of the day, all you would show for it was how much money you made or how much money you lost. There’s no material part of it. In construction, you see what you work on, you see the
end result, the product that you and
your team worked towards. And I was missing that in the finance career.”
So, at a small desk in the noisy trailer on the jobsite, he essentially went back to school, spending two and a half years learning the ropes as an electrical estimator for M. Davis & Sons.
“I didn’t come from an electrical background or anything like that,” Pieretti says, “so you’re not only learning the technical aspect of it — amps, volts, wire, conduit — it’s also the project management side, making sure you’re profitable on the job. It’s been a big learning curve, no doubt, but it’s been good.”
That first job involved a major addition and a renovation on an existing building. Pieretti, 30, notes that he recently drove past the site on Route 141, along with his wife, Christine, and their young son, Charlie. “When that hard work and effort pays off and you see the end result, that makes it all worth it,” Pieretti says. “You think to
yourself, all the time and effort, all the minute details, the day to day — it’s a lot, and you appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that went into it.”
Between his time in finance and
the switch to electrical estimating, Pieretti tried his hand at brewing —
but found his hobby was not going
to translate into a steady living. Then,
he connected to M. Davis through a friend who works there. Pieretti says he enjoys the variety of his work now. Any given day might find him reviewing a request for proposals; reading drawings, specifications or the written scope of work for potential projects; meeting with customers; visiting job sites; or crunching cost numbers.
Having been at M. Davis for three and a half years, Pieretti says he made the right call to change careers. “It’s hard to walk away from the money. A lot of those finance jobs pay very well, but at the
end of the day, you’ve got to think about what’s most important for you.”
DelawareBusinessTimes.com | CAREERS & STUFF 55