Lancaster’s Providence Engineering approves ESOP, turns future over to employees

Ioannis Pashakis//November 8, 2021

Providence Engineering, a Lancaster-based engineering firm of 75 employees, is now employee-owned after adopting an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) last month.

The firm announced to its employees in October that it took out a loan to buy Providence’s shares from its previous owners and shareholders and divided those shares among the 75 team members.

Providence was founded in 1992. Today the firm has expanded to seven offices throughout Pennsylvania.

For a business-like Providence, operating under an ESOP provides an alternative business succession plan, one that will work perpetually now that it is in place.

“The ESOP allows Providence to remain Providence,” said David Bernhardt, president of Providence Engineering.

Bernhardt has no immediate plans of retiring but wanted to transition the company to an ESOP as early as possible to avoid the long challenge of transitioning that he has seen other companies go through, the company wrote in a press release on Monday.

“I didn’t want to wake up years from now and have this panic about what was going to happen with the company,” he said.

Providence joins a growing list of Pennsylvania businesses shifting to employee ownership including Sheetz, Urban Engineers, RETTEW and more. Most recently, Lancaster-based Rhoads Energy announced that it created its own ESOP to give ownership to each of its 160 employees.

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