HADLEY — Al Konieczny can’t walk down the street without recalling the work he’s done to maintain it. His business in Hadley, Karl’s Excavating and Site Work, is rooted in the Pioneer Valley — in its sewer systems, its electrical work, and in the bones of its buildings.
“From doing earthwork around here for the last 40 years, it makes you feel very connected to the community,” said the owner of the second-generation excavation company.
Konieczny’s father, Karl, founded the business 75 years ago, after the Great Depression was followed directly by World War II. Karl was old-school, using horses to plow his fields and satisfied with their work. But when his brother returned from the war, he told Karl about the innovation he’d seen with his own eyes, in a world where horses were replaced with backhoes — and how the compact machines increased productivity.
“He got a lot of information from folks back from the war,” Konieczny said of his father. “He was kind of a sponge. He did a lot of work initially on the Turnpike and paid attention to how things were going. As demand increased, he sold his farm and invested in site work equipment.”
The business was incorporated in 1950 with the help of Karl’s eight siblings and currently offers septic pumping, water line installation and repair, sewer line installation and drainage, and excavating for homeowners and contractors.
On trend
By the time Konieczny was born in 1968, the business was booming in a community that prioritized agriculture and expansion. The fifth college in the area was built in 1965, prompting the establishment of the Five College Consortium, which included Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, UMass Amherst and their newest counterpart, Hampshire College.
“My dad knew the guy who donated the land at Hampshire and did a lot of the original work on the early buildings,” said Konieczny. “It’s a shame that the whole thing is imploding now.”
He’s referring to the announcement late last month that the progressive college will close at the end of the year, though a group of supporters, called Hampshire Next, is pledging to raise $10 million in an effort to save the institution by the time Hampshire’s trustees reconvene on May 16.
Konieczny, who joined the business in 1984, noted that the work they take on often correlates with local, regional or national trends.
“I remember some of the old-timers telling me that when the Clean Water Act came out [in 1972] the crews worked on sewage treatment plants and sewage infrastructure work for a couple of years,” he said.
During his own tenure, the Station Nightclub Fire in 2003 prompted two or three years of urgent sprinkler line work. The blaze in Warwick, Rhode Island occurred in a club without fire sprinklers, and after the band’s pyrotechnics ignited insulation in the walls and ceilings, 100 people died and 230 others were injured. The incident prompted swift changes to fire and building codes in Massachusetts.
Konieczny worked alongside his father, who showed up to work into his early 90s, until Karl died in 2021 at age 94. In 2024, Konieczny took over the business.
New perspective
His wife Jo-Ann has enjoyed watching Karl’s Excavating evolve.
“My father-in-law was pretty ahead of his time,” she said, “but my husband took the business in a different direction.”
Not only has he had to keep up with trends, he’s also tried to push himself out of his comfort zone by doing things like celebrating his business for this story. An introvert who grew up with a dad who “was a hard force” who could be hard to talk to, Konieczny has vowed to be readily available to his staff and his crew — about 28 people — and especially his son Will, who has recently joined the business.
He said he is grateful for a staff of professionals who have stuck by and advised him, and that the business would be “nothing without them.”
Now Will, 23, who graduated from Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in 2021, is looking to up the ante technologically after attending a trade show in Las Vegas, where he learned about billing shortcuts and how making iPads available to construction crews could streamline their work.
“I have to keep an open mind that it’s OK for change to come,” said Konieczny.
A lot to celebrate
An advisor recently told Jo-Ann that not many businesses “successfully move from generation to generation.”
“It’s exiting that we made it through two and might make it to a third,” she said.
Jo-Ann works in education but helps out when needed, particularly as the biggest cheerleader of the business. According to the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, only 40% of U.S. family-owned businesses turn into second-generation businesses, and 13% are passed down successfully to a third generation. (Some sources’ estimates are even lower.)
The couple, who lives in a farm across the street with sons Will and Joe and their daughter Maria, just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary.
They haven’t officially celebrated Karl’s Excavating’s anniversary, but this article is a beginning.
