Connor Westover

President, ASSC

This story is part of our July 2026 Young Professionals issue. To read the print version, click here.

Thirty-year-old Connor Westover took over his father’s air conditioning, plumbing, and process piping company, ASSC, two years ago. Originally, the “succession plan” devised by his father — who started the full-service mechanical and plumbing company when his son was a baby — had Connor easing into the role gradually, first as a vice president, then, eventually, as president. But things didn’t work out that way. Other people in the succession chain peeled off, and before he knew it, the young man found himself at ASSC’s helm. He has worked hard these last two years to make it all come together, both expanding the size of the company and changing the blend of work that it does.

Westover, who was born and raised in Sacramento, received his undergraduate degree in construction management from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is currently enrolled in the MBA program at UC Davis. Given this background, it is no surprise that he relishes the challenge presented by running a growing local business. “With a succession plan comes a lot of different implications,” he says. “My biggest focus has been culture and operations.”

Today, two years into Westover’s tenure, ASSC’s revenue stream is far less reliant on construction work than it used to be. In a post-COVID environment in which many office spaces remain either vacant or underused, far fewer of its big contracts are for work on commercial offices. At one point, 8 in 10 ASSC dollars came from such work. These days, it’s more like 1 in 10 dollars. In lieu of commercial office contracts, the company has moved more into doing projects for hospitals and research centers and has expanded the service side of its operations.

“Back in the day, we were 75 to 80 percent construction revenue,” Westover says. “Today it’s 35 percent, with the rest being service and special projects.” The service side alone, the company president estimates, has grown in revenue by 20 percent since he took charge.

ASSC, which now employs close to 200 core staff (up from 175 a few years ago) and has offices in Sacramento, Concord and Santa Rosa, has been cultivating a reputation as a go-to company for hospitals. They work extensively with Sutter Health’s hospitals and medical centers needing to upgrade and retrofit units. Their work runs the gamut from installing air conditioning systems and constructing new sterile labs at local universities and private facilities for producing tests for viruses such as COVID-19, to putting in sophisticated piping on hospital wards that can bring oxygen and other gases directly into patients’ rooms. “Pretty much anything with water, liquid or air,” Westover says.

Ten years ago, the company had roughly 40,000 square feet of office space. Now, it has a newer and larger headquarters in Sacramento and additional space in Santa Rosa and in Concord — roughly doubling the size of its office footprint. And for Westover, this remains a work in progress. “I’d like to see us have to move into a bigger space yet again,” he says.

Already, the company has expanded its stomping grounds from its core territory of Redding south to Fresno, picking up contracts as far down the coast as Santa Barbara and as far north as Eureka. In the pipeline, Westover says, are plans to expand beyond California. He mentions Reno and Nevada and says there are other locations also under consideration.

Westover says his ambition is to continue to expand the company while allowing it to retain the feel of a family, mom-and-pop enterprise, one that is loyal to its employees and cultivates long-term relationships. Rather than seeking out a few large paydays, his ambition, he explains, is “slow, steady, controlled growth,” based around a core group of employees who want to make ASSC their work home for years at a stretch. “I want to plant my flag on a hill, while maintaining the family feel,” he says.

Westover lives in Rancho Cordova with his wife, Mia, and their infant son, Wade. A rugby aficionado, he has ambitions of one day coaching the sport, maybe even convincing his son to play rugby as well. He’s also deeply drawn to the Sacramento food scene, singling out restaurants such as Mikuni and The Kitchen as favorites. He is an avid outdoorsman, spending as much time as he can in the foothills.

With the United States turning 250 this summer, Westover has been pondering how his experiences intersect with the ideal of the American dream. He says that he wants his young son to grow up “in a country where hard work still means something, where neighbors look out for each other and where he has the same opportunities I had.” He says, “I want him to be proud to be American the same way I am, and I hope we can find more common ground as a country so that’s still true when he’s my age.”

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