For more than 150 years, McCarthy Building Companies has offered workflow solutions from preconstruction through completion. While McCarthy is a national builder, employees live and work in the communities they serve. The contractor is 100% employee-owned, which means employees have a vested interest in the success of every project.
CEO Michael Bolen joined the contractor in 1978 as a formwork carpenter. Bolen became the first CEO in the company’s history without the last name McCarthy. He is determined to continue the company’s mission to become “the best builder in America.”
“We are proud to be the oldest self-performing general contractor in America,” says Bolen.
As one of the top 10 U.S. commercial builders, McCarthy brings in $3 billion in annual revenue. McCarthy has 15 offices with 1,700 full-time salaried and 1,200 non-salaried employees. “Concrete work tends to be a local business,” says Bolen. “It can be challenging competing on a national scale. Focusing our efforts on finding and training qualified workers has been the key for us.”
McCarthy prides itself on using its own labor force to accomplish a portion of its construction project. Self-performing contractors spend years developing and training a strong crew of professionals, while subcontractors and brokers may not have the same opportunities or resources.
McCarthy is successful in a wide variety of markets, including healthcare, education, advanced technology, commercial, government, hospitality, industrial, and marine.
The future looks bright for McCarthy. Bolen believes the industry will stay busy and continue to heat up. The contractor is in the third year of a five-year plan to get back to where it was before the recession hit.
“In two years, we will see 20 to 25% growth of employees and workforce,” says Bolen.
McCarthy uses a combination of real-world knowledge and technology to achieve better control over every aspect of construction
