Philip Rice

Rice & Brouillard Electric has been wired into Haverhill for nearly fifty years — established in 1977, still run by Philip Rice as president, still a one-person shop at 37 Stevens St. Electrical repairs and fire alarms are what the BBB says it does, and the permit trail agrees. Twelve permits carry his name, and the pattern leans commercial rather than kitchen-table: fire-alarm devices relocated and retested at a Methuen property between 2018 and 2020, lighting retrofits and nurse-station wiring at Jamaica Plain addresses running to $39,850 and $38,000, an FPE panel swapped out in Haverhill, pool wiring in Methuen, a service upgrade in Milton. Licensing is the thing to settle before anything else. BuildZoom scores him 0 and stamps the profile with an alert reading "No active license on file"; the Massachusetts electrical licence it lists, #20530, carries a last-seen expiration of July 2016, and a City of Newton electrical contractor licence under the same number shows as inactive, described as cancelled at one point. Directory licence records go stale and attach to the wrong person routinely, so none of that settles his status today — but electrical work is licensed work, and this is a question for the state licensing board rather than a directory page. There is also nothing to read from customers. Neither BuildZoom nor the BBB carries a review, and the BBB issues no rating at all, saying it lacks sufficient information. For a one-person shop running since 1977 that is not strange, but it does mean the licence and his own references are the only things you can actually check. If you call, ask for a current licence number and verify it yourself, ask for two or three recent jobs you can phone, and get the scope in writing before work starts.