Area business owners attend forum

PITTSBURGH – The National Cemetery of the Alleghenies is a few miles north of Dave Jardini’s Meadow Lands home. He and his wife, Dawn, own a small business, and he was wondering whether it could be part of a cemetery expansion project announced in April.
“We make gas lamps, and I thought they might need gas lamps,” said Jardini, operator of American Gas Lamps Works in Springdale, Allegheny County and Allegheny Valley.
He was in Oakland Wednesday morning for an information seminar aimed at small business owners. The forum, organized by the Small Business Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, was designed to explain application, bidding and other processes to would-be subcontractors for a project like the one in Cecil Township.
“A lack of knowledge is the biggest barrier for many of us,” said Jardini, who is still learning after three years of reviving a once-flagging enterprise.
The learning curve can be sharper than a Charlie Morton breaking ball, which is why Jardini had a lot of company in the William Pitt Union’s Assembly Room. An audience of about 30 – many smaller merchants, a few from Washington County – gathered to listen to four speakers explain particulars and procedures.
E.J. Jean-Jacques and Dave Martino came from Washington to represent the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which owns the 292-acre expanse for veterans, part of the National Cemetery system. The spoke and answered questions, as did SBDC Director Ray Vargo and Karan Waigand of the Small Business Administration’s Pittsburgh District Office.
“If your business needs assistance in developing planning or finding out what financing is available, we have a level of resources available,” Vargo said. “We walk clients through the process.”
Jean-Jacques, contracting officer for the VA’s Office of Construction & Facilities Management, advised potential contractors to go to www.cfm.va.gov/til/ for specifications on projects. “Read the specs,” he stressed.
About 10,000 veterans are buried at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies, and the expansion will result in about 10,000 more burial sites. An estimated 6,000 will be burial plots and 4,000 funeral urns. The administration building also will be upgraded.
This project is taking place on 20 acres, land that Martino said has been prepared. “It’s been graded, cleared and has grass.”
Less than one-third – 91 acres – of the cemetery property, just off Interstate 79, is in current use.
Martino, project manager of Jean-Jacques’ office, presented a rough timeline for the Cecil project. And, considering winter weather variables locally, “rough” is the operative word. The forecast calls for completion of specs and drawings in October; anticipated contract award in December; construction to begin in January 2016 and end in January 2018.
“We’re partially funded, but we anticipate being fully funded,” Jean-Jacques said of project that may cost $10 million to $20 million.
Construction won’t be easy, Martino acknowledged. “This is typical Western Pennsylvania land, which is different from most (cemeteries) where we work,” he said. “There also will be rock and maybe coal. We’re looking for a subcontractor experience in this because it is so important.”
Martino said “pretty much all trades are typically needed at a cemetery – carpenters, electricians, plumbers, engineers, landscapers …”
As he was leaving the Pitt campus, Jardini praised the SBDC for its program Wednesday and for what it had done specifically for American Gas Lamp Works.
“They helped us develop lamp styles,” he said.
Jardini, son-in-law of Washington County Commissioner Harlan Shober, said he decided during the seminar he wasn’t ready to get involved with project of this scope. “I picked up that this is a pretty elaborate process.”
But the man with the lamp company was further enlightened in that process. And he wasn’t alone.