Sean Ryan

Sean Ryan came home from work one day and knew things had to change. He’d had enough. Enough working for a company that didn’t care. Enough working a job with no chance for advancement. “I was sick of feeling like I just had a job,” he says. “I wanted to feel proud about my work.”

That evening, the disgruntled backhoe operator walked through his front door, pulled out the phone book and looked up the first weld shop he could find. That’s how Sean discovered B&B Welding.

First, he had to convince Ralph that he was the right guy for the job, a daunting task considering his lack of welding experience. Well, either Sean’s a good salesman or Ralph’s a good judge of character, in the end, Ralph gave Sean the nod.

“You have to prove yourself here,” says Sean. And that’s just what he set out to do. A competitor by nature, Sean laid down his goals: passed his weld tests and learn the trade. “At first,” he says, “I didn’t know anything about reading blue prints. Or reading welding symbols. They were just a million numbers on a piece of paper.” But he learned to make sense of them. And he found his groove on the Cove Point job, welding countless ladders, roof frames, and angles. “I never thought there was this much to welding,” he admits. “Now, I want to learn how to weld everything.”

To Sean, welding is meticulous, skilled work. And there’s no better place to master it than B&B Welding. “There’s a wealth of knowledge here,” he says. But it’s more than a place to learn a trade. “What I like best is working around people who care about their jobs — and each other.”

A fisherman and hunter, Sean fits right in with the B&B team. In fact, one of his most memorable B&B moments happened on a company fishing excursion. “On the way home from fishing,” he says, “We stopped and saw the heli-pad from the Anne Arundel Medical Center job we did. That was a great feeling,” he says. “I’m very proud to work here. And that’s not just me; that’s everybody.”

updated 2009