Garland Construction

Forty-nine building permits filed between 2012 and 2025, and not a single customer star rating to go with them. Garland Construction Corp is the kind of Chicopee outfit whose work turns up in municipal building files rather than on review sites. The company tells its own story at length: a family business started in 1979 by Edward Orwat, a third-generation general contractor who had already spent fifteen years at Joseph Orwat & Sons, the firm his grandfather incorporated in 1949. Edward retired in 2012 and handed the company to his son Daniel; by the company's account, Jilliane Orwat bought a majority share in 2019 and has served as president since July 2020. It puts its tenure at 47 years and describes itself as a family-owned commercial contractor doing government and municipal renovation and remodeling, in wood or steel, across Western and Central Massachusetts and Connecticut. The permit history lines up with that description. BuildZoom's file counts 49 projects spread across Chicopee, West Springfield, Springfield, Northampton, Amherst and Boston, running from 2012 through 2025 — a working trail across the western half of the state and into the city. BuildZoom scores the company 93, putting it above 73% of the roughly 139,000 licensed Massachusetts contractors it tracks. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, number 203645, is active and held in the company's own name. Two things are worth pinning down before a call. First, the trade credentials beyond that registration — a DCAM state certification, and an unrestricted Massachusetts construction supervisor licence held by the president — are the company's own statements, so ask to see them. Second, this is a business that markets itself to municipalities and commercial owners, not to homeowners; whether a house-sized job fits its schedule is a fair opening question. For a school, town building or commercial renovation in the Springfield–Chicopee corridor, the permit trail and the active registration are real footing. For a home project, there is nothing here from anyone who has actually hired them, so lean on references and a walk-through of comparable work.