TD Bank & Hartford Courant feature VASE Company. “Every project needs a strong foundation...”
Paid Post for TD BANK | Sept. 02, 2021 1:35PM | Jessica Chesler
Full excerpt from the
Vincencia Adusei, President VASE Management
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, Vincenica “Vee” Adusei, president and CEO of VASE Management, had just started construction on a housing project for the New Haven Housing Authority. Adusei and her team had to figure out quickly how to safely manage subcontractors and deal with supply-chain delays, all while trying to meet the project deadline. Her company worked with A. Prete Construction in redeveloping the 10-story building, along with two, six-story high-rises.
“At the end of the day,” she says, “if we are not ready to turn these units over, the housing authority is not going to be satisfied, and the residents will be ready to move because at some point they want to get back to their houses.”
As planned, at the end of August, Adusei and her team will hand the keys over to the local housing authority, and residents will begin moving into their homes. While it’s commonly understood — and somewhat expected — that construction projects often take longer to complete than originally planned, Adusei has built a reputation for bringing projects in on time.
VASE works on a variety of projects, from single-family restorations and multifamily units to renovations for several buildings on the Yale campus. She credits this success to effective, transparent communication and a focus on everyone a building project matters too, from the tradespeople and future occupants to the neighboring residents and business owners.
She says, “There's a chain reaction if we don't do a good job, and we are in this together.”
Every project needs a good foundation
““I won’t just talk to the owner that I’m doing the work for,” she says. “I will also talk to the next-door neighbor. When they get back to me, I’ll take them out for breakfast and tell them, ‘Listen, you don’t know who I am. I probably will never see you again, but for the next six months, I’m going to be interrupting your life, and if there is anything that is an issue, I don’t care what time of the day it is. Here’s my cell phone number. Give me a call.””
Like every well-built edifice, Adusei’s projects start with a strong foundation — one built on trust, accountability and communication.
“I'm able to achieve [this success] because of the transparency that I have,” she says.
Throughout her years of consulting, she has noticed that it’s typical for general contractors to stifle communication between subcontractors. She says project details are treated as privileged information, and sharing that information is too often seen as a potential point of vulnerability. Adusei, on the other hand, makes it a point to be as transparent as possible with all of her subcontractors.
As a general contractor, she is responsible for making sure that each subcontractor understands the scope of the project and knows what part belongs to them. While other general contractors might do one-on-one scope reviews with each subcontractor, she prefers to bring everyone who is going to touch the project together for a group scope review.
Additionally, she makes a personal visit to neighbors and business owners to introduce herself and leave her contact information. Sometimes, she has been known to even take them out to breakfast to discuss the project.
“I won’t just talk to the owner that I'm doing the work for,” she says. “I will also talk to the next-door neighbor. When they get back tome, I'll take them out for breakfast and tell them, ‘Listen, you don't know who I am. I probably will never see you again, but for the next six months, I'm going to be interrupting your life, and if there is anything that is an issue, I don't care what time of the day it is. Here's my cell phone number. Give me a call.’”
Perspective and passion can make all the difference
Adusei comes from a family of builders and entrepreneurs in Ghana, so she grew up with an inside look at what it takes to bring a construction project to life and how it can impact the surrounding community.
““I think as women, we bring a different perspective into the construction industry. I think women are more in tune with the details, and they are more open.””
“Seeing them run the business and working with the communities, as well as on the technical aspect of it, I used to love it as a kid,” she says.
Today, Adusei leads her own company — which started as a college project at the University of Bridgeport — with the same passion she developed as a child soaking in the details of the family business. But she brings a unique approach as a woman in a male-dominated industry.
“I think as women,” says Adusei, “we bring a different perspective into the construction industry. I think women are more in tune with the details, and they are more open.”
She also wants to encourage more women to get involved in the lucrative, challenging field. She warns there will be struggles and sometimes it might not feel worth it. But she says the construction-management business is significant and changes lives.
“The way I see it,” says Adusei, “when I'm done, I can say I had a small part in these, however many thousands of homes that we've done, and I had a small fraction of change in their lives.”
