Robert J. Wilder III

Robert J. Wilder III's permit list reads like a commercial plumber's, not a house-call plumber's. Across 45 permits the headline jobs are systems work: plumbing for a $950,000 new-build hotel in East Boston, a $1.5 million hotel conversion in Brookline, restaurant and retail fit-outs, rooftop-unit gas connections, and a repipe of a 116-unit apartment building. The residential entries are the exceptions — a kitchenette in Methuen, a shower-valve change in Revere, a gas boiler reconnected in Brookline. He works alone. BuildZoom lists one employee, the owner, at 180 Tyler St in Methuen, with six of those 45 permits landing in the last three years and a typical permit around $15,000. Its score of 99 places him in the top 15% of Massachusetts licensed contractors on BuildZoom's own scale, but that ranking is built from permits — not one customer has left a review on the page. The licence records need checking rather than trusting. BuildZoom lists a Massachusetts plumbing business licence, #4272, and a plumber licence, #16244, both marked active yet flagged "License Not Verified," with expiration dates in May 2026 — dates now behind us. A third number, 25555, carries a May 2016 expiration and appears twice more as inactive, once-cancelled municipal registrations. None of it has been confirmed against the state registry here. If your job is a commercial fit-out, a gas line, or a multi-unit repipe, that permit history is a real and relevant credential. For a bathroom or a boiler at home, you would be hiring someone whose documented work is mostly elsewhere: ask for residential references, and get current licence numbers you can look up yourself before booking.