Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Robert W. Pereira, founded The Middlesex Corporation in 1972 as Middlesex Paving, Inc., an asphalt paving company in Massachusetts. He is the third generation of construction workers. His grandfather, Valentine, migrated to the United States from Portugal in 1922, and his father, Manuel, both worked in the paving industry. Robert was the first to venture out and start his own business.
Robert started working at the age of 11 selling newspapers to support the family and at the age of 16, he began his career in construction with his father and grandfather while working at Essex Bituminous in Peabody, Massachusetts – those were the times when one of Middlesex’s Core Values, Strong Work Ethic, was ingrained in him.
Robert’s aptitude for both operations and business was critical to expanding the company from paving driveways and small parking lots to owning and operating the first drum-mix asphalt plant in Massachusetts, to developing The Middlesex Corporation into a reputable, diversified general contractor in the asphalt paving, railroad, marine, bridge, road building, and energy industries.
Today, Middlesex constructs some of the largest and most complex heavy civil construction projects in the country. From Massachusetts to Florida, the firm has expanded into a leading national contracting firm ranking #211 on the Engineering News Record’s Top 400 Contractors, recording nearly $400 million in revenue in 2017.
While expanding the general contracting business, Robert also diversified the organization to include rock quarries to produce aggregate; an equipment purchasing and leasing arm that operates and maintains a fleet of thousands of pieces of equipment with a replacement value in excess of $100 Million, Middlesex Paving, LLC and Middlesex Asphalt, LLC, which installs and produces asphalt, and is the highest-producing asphalt facility in Florida. The company has also diversified into the gas and electric distribution industry, working for some of the largest utility companies in the nation, and most recently launching Massachusetts Ready Mix, a concrete supplier serving the Greater Boston area.
Robert’s foresight into diversifying the businesses allows The Middlesex Corporation to offer owners a broad spectrum of services and value for their projects as well as varied and exciting opportunities for its Team Members.
In 2008 Robert handed the reigns of the day-to-day operations of the business to his son Robert (Bob) Pereira II. Bob has worked at Middlesex since the age of 13 in all the different operating areas of the company. Bob continues to reinforce the values that Robert applied in establishing The Middlesex Corporation and now have been enshrined as the company’s governing Core Values of:
Safety first in everything we do.
Quality in all we offer.
Integrity in the way we act and do business.
Professionalism in how we represent ourselves and the company.
Strong Work Ethic that produces positive results.
Commitment to the Success of all Team Members and stakeholders in our projects.