by Abby Gruen, The Star-Ledger, 05.14.2010

A hot Jersey summer made Nelson Ferreira into a businessman.

Working as a road laborer for Local 472 in Newark after high school, the construction executive set himself a goal — to get out of the sun and stay cool at work.

At 19, he put his shovel down and borrowed $90,000 from his parents to make his first business investment: an air-conditioned, blue Mack dump truck.

From that modest start, Ferreira went on to add 18 more trucks and in 1995 start Ferreira Construction, building his first bridge in Somerset County for $300,000.

Today, Ferreira, 43, has completed more than $200 million in construction projects, including the recent expansion of Route 1 in Edison.

In 2007, when Ferreira built a new 42,000-square-foot headquarters, he got a grant from the state to install solar panels on the roof. That project launched Ferreira into the clean-tech industry. He formed Noveda Technologies, an energy monitoring firm with over 200 clients, and Vanguard Energy Partners, a solar energy integrator, that has installed more than $30 million of solar panels.

Ferreira employs over 300 people today, and he still has that blue Mack dump truck parked in his garage at home in Chester, a reminder of how far he has come from his teenage years.

His commitment to his workers runs deep. He held on to his union laborers during the recession, retraining them from heavy construction to solar panel installation. Four of his original employees still work for him. In a recent interview with Your Business, Ferreira talked about his values and his decision to go into green energy........read more