192: From Hard Bid to $450 Million: Dave Fontaine Jr., CEO of Fontaine Bros., on Reinventing the Family Business

Fontaine Bros. was started in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1933 by two teenage immigrant brothers, Eudore and George Fontaine. Today the firm builds K-12 schools, higher education facilities, healthcare projects, and municipal work across New England, with offices in Springfield and Worcester.

Dave joined the family business in 2011. In an earlier interview, he described himself as “an entrepreneur who ended up in a great family business” — not a given path, even inside a family company. Fontaine Bros has built a reputation for sustainable construction along the way: the firm has appeared on ENR’s Top 100 Green Contractors list for 11 consecutive years (#52 nationally in 2025) and ENR’s Top 400 Contractors list for five years running.

One of the firm’s largest recent projects, recognized with an ENR Award of Merit in 2025, is Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, built as part of a joint venture with DiMeo Construction. Fontaine Bros has also built Court Square in Springfield and DeBerry-Swan Elementary School, among other institutional projects across the region.

Beyond running Fontaine Bros, Dave also runs F2 Ventures, his own investment and advisory vehicle for construction-technology startups, with investments in Trade Hounds (a hiring platform for construction trades), Otto Technologies (AI-powered ladder safety), and SkillSignal (digital worker safety compliance).

The episode also touches on the reverse version of Dave’s path: Rens stepped away from working alongside his own father to start H+O, and the two compare notes on what that kind of decision inside a family business looks like from both directions.

Outside the business, Dave co-founded the Fontaine Community Foundation, which lets Fontaine Bros employees help direct the company’s charitable giving, and he helped save the White Hut, a longtime West Springfield restaurant he’s called “an institution, a place none of us wanted to see closed.

Listen now to hear how one of New England’s oldest construction firms is building for its next hundred years.

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