The advent of new technology across countless industries, especially in the way of AI (artificial intelligence), means that there are new advancements every year in practically every market niche, even when it comes to creating a backyard and/or patio space. As usual, the aim for a lot of homeowners is an outdoor space that provides maximum comfort and security, and manufacturers in the construction space are rising to meet that desire. According to an article for HBSDealer by Joe Raboine, “Experts predict that the outdoor living market will hit $3.66 billion by 2033.”

Lee Rivett for Retail Insider says that retailers across Canada, for instance, are beginning to move into displaying outdoor living supplies and ornamentation much earlier than usual in 2026, which could be an indicator that it will be an important market segment this year.

It will likely not be surprising for many to see more AI-infused technology become part of the typical backyard experience. In an article for Residential Tech Today, Rob Stott says that automation is already here for many areas of outdoor living and luxury. For example, motorized screens and outdoor shade structures like pergolas allow homeowners to relax in the shade to their desired intensity and coverage. Stott says that these systems can also be helpful in transitional zones like covered patios and screened porches to improve sun protection, wind and rain management, and even bug repelling. Lighting can also be controlled via LED strips on dimmer switches and customizable lighting schemes.

Outdoor automation can also be valuable for additional weather protection, as with sensors that measure important outdoor elements like humidity. “This level of automation is particularly beneficial for second homes or vacation properties,” says Stott, when owners may not be present to ensure an optimal environment. Now, homeowners invested in digital and AI platforms through Amazon Alexa and other like platforms can control lighting, home security, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems, and now the patio environment overall in one place.

An article for Realty Times says that automation in backyard technology continues to shape what the modern patio looks like. Products like the Pergola X by StruXure, a Georgia-based builder, allow for automatic control over the elements with innovations like sensors that automatically close the pergola roof when it’s raining or detect movement to synchronize with homeowner lighting. Even heating elements like fire pits can be remotely controlled and adjusted via mobile apps or even voice-controlled AI assistants.

StruXure is joined by others in the space aiming to make an impact in outdoor living, with outdoor furniture companies like Yotrio Corporation, Brown Jordan, Agio International, and more all focusing their efforts on the values of innovation, sustainability, and aesthetic appeal within the sector.

Another trend behind backyard and patio spaces is the desire of homeowners to create a space that supports physical and mental well-being. This endeavour can take many forms, like an outdoor space designed to enhance nearby natural elements like plants and trees. It can even mean simply making room for elements that look to bring a homeowner further comfort, from a simple yoga mat for daily practice to a barrel sauna or cold plunge for more intensive practices. Lee Rivett says that, when it comes to selling products associated with outdoor living, “Retailers are selling an aspirational lifestyle centred on entertaining, relaxation, and home investment.”

The patio/backyard space as one for positive effects on health has to do with its sensory qualities as much as any one piece of technology. Outdoor living experts often suggest promoting a quiet, peaceful spot through the plants and greenery you may choose to add, the natural light you let in, and the use of both the local environment and helpful tools like barriers or vertical wall gardens to keep noise at bay. Adequate space is also encouraged.

Comfort and ease of use are not the only concerns for modern homeowners, as many want to embrace the use of more ecologically friendly building materials so as to lessen a new project’s carbon footprint. Joe Raboine’s article says that alternative materials for fencing and decking became a much bigger talking point in 2025, including vinyl and aluminum options. Materials like these can be used to create spaces that are more resistant to weather elements like snow and rain as well as heat and insects.

The use of alternative materials to create a wood-like exterior in the backyard/outdoor space is called composite decking, a product now offered by hardware store chains. This practice allows for various aesthetic specifications to be made without sacrificing durability against typical North American weather or the wear-and-tear that traditional materials experience over time. Modular deck systems, ones that can be customized easily and installed affordably, are also a rising trend in the backyard industry. Raboine says that hardscape (i.e. pavement) manufacturers are bringing more modularity into their product designs because of its increasing popularity and the desire for customers to create a patio that is truly their vision.

Nothing is above rethinking in the backyard, to the point that even grass lawns are beginning to fall out of favour. The eco-friendly lens sees lawns as a more maintenance-intensive backyard option that has a less favourable environmental footprint, especially when compared to alternatives like low ground covers or turfs. Alternatives like these, such as certain clovers, echo the appearance of grass but require far less upkeep, with many types of cover calling for less watering or mowing than traditional grass. In some areas of the world, the methods of lawn upkeep (watering, sodding, mowing) are placing excessive strain on valuable water and electricity resources, so the move into environmentally friendly takes on the classic is a trend likely to accelerate with time.

No matter the reason for a new backyard or patio project, there are all-new considerations for both would-be and experienced builders as a new season approaches. Whether incorporating automation and new tech into the space, building more consciously, or simply looking to make a house feel like home, there are so many new and exciting ways to improve your outdoor experience and make something that may have only been imagined until now.

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For good reason, play is even protected as a fundamental right in Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, deep recognition of the benefits of play and the importance of its role in development. Play is paramount to cognitive, physical, emotional, and social development, which makes it good for the mind, body, and soul. It is where imagination comes to life, where challenges and fears are faced, and where relationships with others and the environment are navigated.

While play can happen almost anywhere, one of the most accessible locations for play is found in public parks and playgrounds where children can congregate and be free to explore and where the imagination can run wild. From spaceships and pirate ships to castles in faraway lands, a playground can become whatever a child’s mind can muster. It is a blank canvas where children can be anything, or anyone, they want to be, particularly when the equipment and the space have been optimized for use and safety.

Fun for all ages and abilities
Any discussion about safe and inclusive spaces must begin with universal design (UD), a principled approach to creating spaces, places, and products that support access, safety, and inclusion in the built environment, enabling use by all people regardless of age or ability. Where UD is applied, there is no need to require special adaptations as they are already considered and incorporated into the design proactively and thoughtfully.

Established by architect Ronald Mace at North Carolina State University, UD is built upon seven principles including equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and size and space for approach/use.

Whether it is the inclusion of automated sliding doors, the use of symbols and language, tactile flooring, lever-style doors or handles, or ensuring that spaces are barrier-free and have room to manoeuvre, UD is the consideration of the component parts of a space that contribute to the functioning of the whole. For instance, an inclusive park is one that seeks to remove physical and social barriers to interaction and enjoyment of the equipment and lands, or the inclusion of sensory zones and quiet areas, and so much more. From the design to the materials, like swings with harness supports and wheelchair-accessible structures with double-wide ramps, these spaces are designed for use by all.

The importance of play
Play stimulates brain development which supports cognitive function including the ability to think critically, solve problems, navigate challenges, and build confidence in one’s fine and gross motor skills and abilities, as well as social skills. Whether engaging individually or as a part of a collective, public recreational spaces offer countless opportunities for social interaction where children (and adults) can cooperate, empathize, share, and navigate disputes.

Children especially benefit from unstructured play time, which supports the development of their independence, confidence, and ability to navigate their own feelings of physical and emotional safety. And while this is true of children, adults also stand to benefit from time spent in play in parks and public spaces, as it serves to support cognitive growth and memory, physical wellbeing, and emotional and social faculties at all ages.

Parks with outdoor gym equipment are gaining popularity as one way to improve access to the tools that support health and wellbeing across all ages. As not everyone has access to a gym membership, these spaces can be a gateway to a healthier physical lifestyle as well as the social and emotional wellbeing of the community as it brings different ages together in a shared, common space.

This is the same for integrated walking trails that promote physical activity for all ages. American Trails says that there is a direct correlation between the availability of trails and the health of a community, which means that where there is access to these resources, people will use them for the betterment of themselves and the community as costs and reliance on healthcare are reduced.

Gardens are another impactful form these spaces can take. Beyond their aesthetic appeal, research shows that engaging with flowers and plants can significantly impact emotional well-being. Sustainable, native plantings and even vegetable gardens can create healthy spaces where skills can be learned and the literal fruits of labour can be enjoyed, feeding the bellies of the people and the souls of the neighbourhood.

All of this play results in fun, but more importantly, the spontaneity serves to reduce stress, foster creativity, and support a more productive individual and society. At a time when anxiety and depression are at an all-time high, these kinds of experiences are truly invaluable. There is also much to be gained from interaction between people of all ages, particularly in the post-pandemic period when isolation is worse than ever before. The shared use of these spaces is an opportunity to create interpersonal bridges through design.

Whether the space acts as a communal ground for peers to meet or for new relationships to blossom, there are countless ways that such spaces can be designed to optimize their performance and the outcomes of their use.

Investing in the future
Whether it is a park upgrade, a new build, or a space that is integrated into a new development, there is plenty to consider in the design of a space to ensure that people of all ages benefit from the investment. While municipalities carry a great deal of the responsibility to ensure these safe and inclusive public spaces exist, communities are not the only ones who are investing in the future of children through play.

Canadian Tire, through its Jumpstart program, which was established in 2005 to make sport and recreation more accessible to youth, particularly those with financial barriers, is a private interest that works tirelessly to ensure play is truly inclusive for children of all ages and abilities. This empowering program seeks to bridge the gap between children and sport and recreation to ensure that everyone has access to the essential benefits therein including the previously mentioned advantages as well as the self-esteem and confidence needed to succeed in social and academic settings.

Jumpstart also helps communities build more inclusive play spaces. As it stands, there are 24 Jumpstart Inclusive Playgrounds and 19 additional inclusive play spaces supported by Jumpstart across Canada, which have been designed from the ground up to be universally accessible and enjoyed by all. From barrier-free playgrounds to multi-sport courts like inclusive baseball fields and para hockey rinks, Jumpstart is available to work with municipalities to extend the benefits to residents and communities at large.

Maintaining a standard
Like anything, the materials and equipment used to construct these communal public spaces have evolved greatly over time. High-performance flooring designed to minimize impact and maximize grip, static-free materials, and even anti-microbial surfaces can be integrated to ensure the optimal use and outcomes of the shared built environment.

As the availability and performance of materials have changed, so too have the regulations and standards to which they are subject. The structures are getting higher, more complex, and more imaginative, but not at the expense of safety.

Not only have national standards been established in the wake of these advancements, but a sector of trained inspection professionals who ensure the safety and performance of these spaces has also come to be. In North America, the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), the Canadian Playground Safety Institute (CPSI), and the International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA) are the most recognized bodies in the space and demonstrate the importance of establishing and enforcing standards to ensure that kids can be kids in the spaces that are designed for them.

Furthermore, such regulation speak volumes about the value that these spaces add to a community’s vibrance. Where these built environments encompass inclusivity and safety, and where designs are optimized for use, children and people of all ages find a sense of self, a sense of community, and a sense of imagination thanks to having a place where body and mind can be free to explore.

Maximizing return on investment
Personal and social growth is certainly an outcome of a well-designed public space, and a well-designed public space would take every opportunity to maximize return on investment (ROI) through design.

Every community has its own unique needs that can be accounted for in the design of public spaces and playgrounds, multiplying the countless benefits of their existence and use. Like any public project, successfully meeting these needs begins with community consultation. Once a baseline is established, offering the public several design options to choose from is best practice.

Once a decision is made and construction is complete, the very nature of the community will be changed for the better thanks to a new frontier for play and the countless advantages it will afford people of all ages and walks of life. Where the infrastructure of play exists, so too does the rich vibrancy of community.

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“You could go to another company and work on a similar project with a different logo on your shirt,” McDonald says. “What makes the experience different is the people. When you have a team that shares common values, supports one another, and embraces a true foxhole mentality—where everyone is committed to each other’s success—it creates a culture that’s difficult to replicate.”

That philosophy, rooted in accountability and a quietly fierce loyalty to culture, has defined Erland’s nearly five-decade journey from a five-person open-shop spinoff in Burlington, Massachusetts, to a multi-division construction firm with a portfolio spanning student housing, life sciences, and academic institutions across New England.

Erland Construction was established in 1977 as the open-shop arm of a leading union contractor, created to deliver more cost-effective construction, particularly for Nordblom Company in Northwest Park, where Erland’s offices remain to this day. When legislation prohibiting so-called double-breasting (the simultaneous ownership of both union and open shop companies) came into effect, Erland broke away as an independent entity with just five employees.

The company took its name from its founding president, Kenneth Erland Froeberg, whose story was cut short when he passed from a heart attack in 1983. At that point, Tom Blesso and Chuck Vaciliou, both still with the company today as Board Members, faced a pivotal decision. Young, capable, and clear-eyed about what they didn’t yet know, they sought additional leadership rather than overreach.

They found it in McDonald’s grandfather, Bob McDonald, whose own story is one of improbable ascent. Growing up in Jamaica Plain, when he was 10 years old he lost his father, so he and his brother caddied after school to help their mother cover rent. In 1949, he was in the first class of Francis Ouimet Scholars, an award that paid full college tuition and enabled him to go to MIT and Harvard. Upon graduation he went to Vappi Construction for 27 years followed by a stint at Gilbane, before he joined Erland as President. “He grew up with a lot against him,” McDonald says, “but through that scholarship, he was able to accomplish things that would have seemed very unlikely given the environment he was raised in.”

Steve McDonald, Sean’s father, joined the firm in 1986 and later became President in 1997. The triumvirate of Steve McDonald, Tom Blesso, and Chuck Vaciliou each brought complementary strengths that have carried the company through decades of growth.

Sean himself worked as a laborer during summers while in high school and college, and eventually joined as an Assistant Project Manager in 2017, also serving as a Project Manager, Estimator, and Vice President throughout his tenure. He stepped into the presidential role around a year and a half ago. “I grew up around the business,” he says. “Coming to kids’ holiday parties at five years old and going to the Erland family cookouts. What always stood out was that our people never approached it just as work. They took pride in what they built, held themselves accountable, and genuinely cared about each other and the company’s success.”

Today, Erland operates in several markets. Its Residential division focuses on heads-in-beds projects, apartments, student housing, senior living, and hotels. Its Advanced Tech/Life Sciences group handles technically complex environments, including cleanrooms, laboratories, and increasingly, client-driven expansions into office renovations and institutional upgrades. The third arm, ACC, Academic, Corporate, and Commercial, covers the broadest range of work, with academic construction currently representing one of the firm’s strongest performing sectors.

In 2022, the company reached a peak of $320 million in volume, a high-water mark that was followed by what McDonald describes candidly as turbulence—a convergence of market headwinds, high interest rates, material cost escalation, and the significant internal transition involved in implementing an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

“It takes discipline to remain focused on the opportunities that align best with your team’s expertise and capacity,” McDonald says. “Our goal is always to ensure we have the right people and resources in place to deliver exceptional results for our clients while creating a positive experience for all team members. When those elements come together, it sets the foundation for a successful project for everyone involved.”

The ESOP transition, which Erland completed in 2022 and announced in 2023, was deliberately structured to preserve independence rather than enable exit. Leadership made the decision to sell a portion of the company to its employees, giving them a direct financial stake in Erland’s future.

For McDonald, the ESOP formalized something he had observed since childhood: that Erland’s people had always behaved like owners. Average tenure at the company currently sits at 12 to 13 years, a striking figure given that the majority of its staff are under 40 years of age. “Employee ownership reinforces that commitment by creating meaningful opportunities for long-term wealth creation and career growth,” he says. “The goal was: how can we make Erland an enduring organization for generations to come?”

The ESOP also functions as a retention and recruitment tool at a moment when the construction industry more broadly is seeing average tenures shrink to two or three years. Erland’s workforce includes four members of the Driscoll family, three McDonalds, three Crafts, three Burkes, and multiple second-generation employees who grew up knowing the company before they ever worked for it.

Perhaps the most visible expression of Erland’s current capabilities is a $130 million student residence project underway for Capstone Development Partners at Tufts University in Medford, a two-tower, 10-story development delivering 664 beds to a campus operating in one of the country’s most acute student housing markets. “The greater Boston area has been under a severe housing crisis,” McDonald notes. “Having the privilege to help shape the student residential experience on such an important campus is something our team takes a lot of pride in.”

The project was procured as a design-build undertaking in partnership with Capstone Development Partners, an Alabama-based developer whom Erland had previously engaged on a potential student housing project at Clark University in Worcester, a project that ultimately was canceled due to FAFSA-related complications. Despite that early setback, a strong partnership was developed between Erland and Capstone.

The Tufts project marks Erland’s second use of Canam Hambro’s composite floor system, a prefabricated solution involving composite steel joists capable of spanning up to 43 feet, with larger web openings for routing of services. The system allows 3.5 inches of concrete to be poured over wire mesh and plywood, with the plywood stripped from beneath within 24 hours. The key advantage over traditional stick-frame construction is that the floor below can be worked on concurrently, accelerating the overall program.

The project is also Erland’s first to be built under Massachusetts’ passive house energy code requirements, an increasingly prominent feature of the state’s construction landscape.

“Complex projects inevitably present challenges, but they can be successfully managed when the entire team is aligned around a common goal,” McDonald says. “That collaborative approach has allowed us to maintain our schedule and budget objectives while continuing to meet our client’s expectations.”

Erland’s Advanced Tech/Life Sciences division has built its reputation through sustained positive client relationships that generate ongoing campus-wide work. EMD Serono’s Billerica facility is focused on difficult-to-treat conditions like infertility, multiple sclerosis, and cancer research, and has been an Erland client since approximately 2018, with ongoing projects as their program expands.

Vice President and Director of Operations, Matthew Combs, who oversees the division as a partner in the business, was the original project manager on the account, and McDonald tells a story that captures what long-term partnership in life sciences construction can mean in practice: a medication developed in the facility Erland built was later used to treat a member of Combs’ own family. “It’s pretty meaningful when you see that you’re not just building a project, but something that has a real impact on the community and people around it,” McDonald says.

In the independent school market, Erland is currently delivering a field house at Middlesex School in Concord, emblematic of the academic sector relationships which McDonald says are built on trust and transparency.

This kind of investment in the community also underpins the Erland Foundation, now in its tenth year of service under the leadership of Steve Craft, Chris Landry, Nicole Harrison, Chris McHugh, Melissa Craft, and Bernadette Flaherty. The Foundation has evolved from a charitable giving vehicle into a broader platform for employee volunteerism and community engagement, and has exceeded $300,000 in fundraising in the past decade, a milestone the company marks with visible pride.

A longstanding partnership with the New England Center for Children (NECC) sits at the heart of the foundation’s work. Erland’s eighth annual Strikeout Autism bowling event brought together NECC staff, students, families, employees, and trade partners in February. And more recently, Erland staff participated in NECC’s annual 5K, giving up personal weekend time to support the center’s work.

The foundation also supports housing organizations, youth membership programs, food security initiatives, educational nonprofits, and healthcare causes across Greater Boston.

Never one to stand still or lag behind, Erland’s approach to artificial intelligence mirrors its broader philosophy: measured, purpose-led, and resistant to trend-chasing. The company currently uses Voyage Control for material tracking on the Tufts site, Briq for financial automation, and Billy for insurance compliance monitoring.

“We’re not always the early adopter of whatever’s hot in the market,” McDonald says. “We’re looking for the right thing that’s going to address the issues we’re actually trying to solve.”

This caution is grounded in experience. On takeoff tools, Erland found that the time saved by automation was largely consumed by the verification process required to catch errors—missing windows on an elevation, for instance. The tools are evolving, McDonald acknowledges, but have not yet reached the point where they can be trusted without the kind of scrutiny that negates the efficiency gain.

Erland participates in a peer group of non-competing firms from across the country, meeting twice yearly to share Best Practices and intelligence on technology adoption, AI in particular. “We want to find the right things that actually improve efficiency and provide value to our clients and our team,” McDonald says. “We also focus on AI policy, making sure people are using it responsibly and that we’re protecting not just our own information but our clients’ information.”

At the heart of Erland’s next chapter is a recently revised set of core values operating under the banner of “O.W.N. It,” which stands for One Team, Winning Results, and No Excuses. McDonald is candid about the tendency of company values to exist only on websites and in welcome packs, and Erland makes it a point to do things differently.

In the past year, the company has sent 20 percent of its employees to Team Trek. This week-long program in Arkansas is centered on personal and professional development and leadership self-awareness. It is this kind of investment in people that McDonald believes will contribute to Erland’s competitive position going forward as much as any technology platform.

“If we continue to invest in our people and do everything we can—with more of a servant leadership approach than a shape-up-or-ship-out attitude—we’re going to be more successful,” he says. “Construction is still, at its core, a people-driven industry. Pick up the phone, go to the job site, be a person. The human connection is so important.”

For a company approaching its 50^th year, still headquartered in the same Northwest Park where it first broke ground, that is not nostalgia; it is strategy. And it is a winning formula that will surely stand this firm in good stead for another 50 years.

The post Built on People: A Culture-First Approach to Growth and Innovation<p class="company">Erland Construction</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

For RAWSO Constructors, a Tennessee-based earthwork and utility contractor that has grown from a single rented skid steer into an operation of roughly 200 people, that lack of glamour is part of the point. The company has built its reputation not on flashy projects, but on the systems, people, and partnerships that sit underneath them.

According to Shawn Hampton, Board Member and Chief Strategy Officer, RAWSO has deliberately stayed narrow in its scope. “‘People’ is more of our business and ‘construction’ is what we do,” Hampton says, quick to add that the company has no interest in stretching across multiple trades. RAWSO sticks to earth and utilities, site development work that includes grading, excavation, and the underground infrastructure that must go in before a building can rise. That focus, Hampton argues, is itself a competitive advantage: rather than being a generalist contractor that does many things adequately, RAWSO has built deep expertise in one demanding discipline.

RAWSO’s origin story is a familiar one in the trades, with a twist. Founder and CEO, Dylan Stephens, came through Middle Tennessee State University’s Concrete Industry Management program and went to work for a local civil contractor. What he found frustrated him—particularly, how employees were being treated and developed within the industry.

Rather than staying and trying to change the system from the inside, Stephens made a leap. With a young family to support, he bought a skid steer, started taking on driveway work, and built a small operation job by job. That early period of odd jobs, small grading work, and the kinds of projects most contractors outgrow quickly, laid the foundation for everything that followed.

By 2014 and 2015, the projects started getting bigger, and RAWSO began adding team members beyond a handful of field helpers. Crucially, the frustrations that drove Stephens to launch the company in the first place didn’t get forgotten as the business scaled; they became the operating philosophy, to build something where people are developed, not just deployed.

Early on, the company moved away from Excel-based estimating and adopted HCSS software, a platform widely used across the civil construction industry for estimating, project management, and field reporting. That sequencing mattered. By building a technological foundation first, RAWSO created a shared set of processes and data structures that new hires could plug into as the team grew. Rather than each project manager or estimator developing their own methods, everyone works from the same playbook, which means a new hire can get up to speed faster and contribute sooner.

That investment has compounded over time What started as basic scorecards has evolved into dashboards built on top of HCSS data, giving leadership and field teams real-time visibility into project performance, costs, and trends. The company is now exploring how AI tools might extend this visibility further, layering smarter, more efficient dashboards on top of the data it already collects.

Kimberly Lush, Director of Cultural Relations at RAWSO, points to the impact directly: “I feel like technology has allowed us to grow and build a team, and to achieve a consistent level of excellence,” she says. This kind of institutional knowledge, made accessible and clear, is something RAWSO sees as central to how it develops talent.

A culture of safety is also integral to employee success, with the company’s safety program led by Colton Richardson, who came up as an estimator and project manager after graduating from the same concrete industry program as Stephens. When Richardson found himself burned out in that role—but passionate about safety and people—RAWSO restructured around that passion, spending several months transitioning him out of project management and into building a dedicated safety department from scratch.

What he built goes well beyond standard compliance tracking. Field crews log not just injuries, but near misses, equipment incidents, and minor issues—a scratched piece of equipment, a close call, anything that didn’t go quite right. These get discussed in field operations meetings as lessons learned: what happened, why it happened, and what the takeaway is.

The real value, though, is in the pattern recognition that all that logging enables. If minor incidents that normally show up once or twice a week start showing up two or three times a day, RAWSO treats that as a leading indicator, a sign that crews are stretched thin or under pressure, even before anything serious occurs. When that pattern shows up, leadership responds by scaling back hours, holding all-hands conversations, and addressing the underlying strain before it turns into a real incident.

This data-backed approach is layered with regular inspections and third-party reviews, and RAWSO holds itself to standards that, in many cases, are tighter than OSHA or TOSHA requirements. The cultural framing matters too. As Hampton puts it, “We don’t have safety police; we have a safety culture.” The goal is participation, a safety culture that field crews own rather than one imposed on them.

Across the heavy civil industry, one topic comes up at nearly every conference and peer group meeting: the workforce. Specifically, the looming retirement of a generation of highly skilled field leaders, and the comparatively thin pipeline of younger workers coming in to replace them.

Lush is blunt about the stakes: “We have this entire generation of highly skilled individuals who are on the cusp, in the next 10 years, of retiring, and we’re going to lose all that information if we can’t figure out how to download it from them to the next generation.”

Rather than just talking about the problem, RAWSO hired a dedicated training professional, someone with a teaching background and family ties to the construction industry, who understood both the technical content and the people she’d be working with.

Many field employees didn’t pursue traditional higher education, so a classroom-style training model wouldn’t have worked. Instead, RAWSO built its program around partnerships with the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER), using existing industry-specific resources as a foundation.

But the bulk of the training is in leadership and communication. Field leaders and foremen are often spread across multiple job sites, making consistent communication difficult even before generational differences are factored in. RAWSO’s training focuses heavily on helping experienced leaders translate what they know into language that resonates with younger crew members, rather than assuming younger workers simply lack the right attitude or work ethic.

One concrete output of this push is RAWSO’s GRIT Line program, still in its early stages, which is designed to help field employees move into their first leadership roles. The company is also showing up in schools and at trade fairs, working to raise awareness of civil construction as a career path, an industry that, Lush notes, tends to get overlooked in skilled-trades conversations dominated by HVAC, electrical, welding, and plumbing.

Even the equipment itself is part of the solution. Manufacturers are increasingly building GPS-guided digital-control systems that appeal to a generation that grew up with video game controllers rather than farm equipment.

Certainly, RAWSO’s growth hasn’t been a straight line. For several years running, the company saw growth rates between 50 and 300 percent year over year, the kind of trajectory that builds reputation fast but can also outpace systems. In 2022, that growth caught up with the company. A combination of challenging projects and problematic soil conditions on one of its largest jobs caused things to unravel quickly. What had taken roughly a decade to build started to come apart within 12 to 18 months.

Hampton describes it as a humbling period, one that forced leadership to recognize that intuition and a small group of key people could no longer carry the operation. The response wasn’t to retreat, but to invest more intentionally in both people and systems.

Two leaders in particular reinforced the rebuild: Keith McBride, who came on as Vice President of Construction Operations, and Matthew McQueen, who became President. McBride is described as the kind of veteran field leader every heavy civil contractor needs, someone with decades of old-school construction experience and a reputation for high standards. What makes him different, in Hampton’s telling, is humility: rather than becoming an indispensable bottleneck, McBride has leaned into mentoring younger employees and adapting his own approach rather than insisting it’s his way or nothing.

McQueen, meanwhile, became the connective tissue for culture as the company scaled, reinforcing the values that had carried RAWSO from its earliest days.

Looking back, Hampton frames the period as one of the company’s defining moments because of how the team responded to it. “Being able to walk away from it and say we’re much stronger now, and we realize what our mistakes were and we were humble enough to fix them, I think is huge,” he says.

Today, the company focuses primarily on private-sector work, with public and DOT work historically making up less than five percent of its business. The team deliberately gets involved early, working alongside owners, developers, engineers, and general contractors well before construction begins. That early involvement allows RAWSO to propose value-engineering solutions and reduce risk before it becomes costly. It’s a more labor-intensive approach than simply submitting a number at the last round of bidding—RAWSO may end up pricing a job three, four, or five times before it’s awarded—but Hampton suggests the upfront investment pays off for everyone involved.

Earthwork and utility work occupy a particular position in a project’s risk profile. Dollar for dollar, it’s often one of the largest and riskiest scopes in a construction package, outside of structural steel, and one of the pieces most likely to determine whether a project can move forward, especially in markets with limited sites or difficult terrain.

For general contractors, particularly younger project managers who may have only a few years of experience managing dozens of trades on a vertical build, having an earthwork partner who understands those risks and proactively manages them can be the difference between a project that pencils and one that doesn’t.

Once a project moves into execution, that same forward-looking approach continues in the field, with two-week and four-week lookaheads that account not just for RAWSO’s own scope, but for how the team interacts with other trades on site.

As RAWSO continues to grow, the company’s leadership remains focused on the combination that got it here: a narrow and deep expertise in earthwork and utilities, a technology foundation that gives people at every level visibility into how the business runs, a safety culture built on data and participation rather than enforcement, and a training pipeline aimed squarely at the industry’s looming workforce gap.

For Hampton, the measure of success isn’t any single project, but the broader company culture. “I feel like that’s given us the ability to give people really great growth,” he says. “I’m so proud of the culture and the environment where we’re able to bring in young talent and see them grow.”

In an industry bracing for a wave of retirements and a widening skills gap, RAWSO’s bet is that the contractors who invest in both their systems and their people now will be the ones still standing and still building a decade from now.

The post Built on Dirt and Data: A Winning Approach to Heavy Civil Work<p class="company">RAWSO Constructors</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.