Joset Corporation

In 2022 Historic Ipswich handed out its Mary Conley preservation awards, and one of them went to Grant's Barn on Woods Lane — an 1865 barn that between 2017 and 2021 was raised, given a new foundation, re-supported throughout and insulated. The exterior work was Joset Corporation's. That is the kind of job this Ipswich company has been taking since 1984, when John H. "Jack" Josephson, a civil engineer who had estimated and managed projects for other New England firms, started it under his own name. His obituary in the Gloucester Times last year records the founding. Eric Josephson runs it now; the BBB lists him as owner and grades the company A+, though it is not BBB accredited. The permit trail is more commercial than most homeowners expect: a $170,000 conversion of a break room into three offices and two bathrooms in Newburyport, a $72,000 rubber membrane roof at the same address, $50,000 of office partitions and a $64,000 bathroom renovation on Electronics Avenue in Danvers, and roof, siding and foundation repair on Main Street in West Newbury. Alongside those sit small residential jobs — a bathtub swap in Rowley, decking and a stair rail in Danvers, a wall reinforced in Manchester so a stair lift could go in. Eric Josephson has also appeared before Gloucester city commissions on waterfront work, describing pile caps, structural concrete slabs and repaving around MBTA tracks. The company says it employs full-time tradesmen with supervisors who work on the job rather than a layer of middle management, that all employees are OSHA 10 certified and scaffold- and respirator-trained, that several hold unrestricted Construction Supervisor's Licenses, and that it offers a one-year warranty on new work. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, #102054, is active on the state registry. What is missing is customers talking. Google carries two ratings and no written note; BuildZoom and the BBB both show none at all. So there is nothing here about how the crew communicates, holds a schedule, or handles a problem — and BuildZoom's permit records show only one permitted project in the past three years, so the visible run of work is mostly older. This reads like the right call for a restoration or a commercial fit-out on the North Shore, especially where an old structure needs to be understood before it is touched. Ask for references from the last two years specifically, and ask which of their supervisors would be on your job.