After graduating from North Carolina State with a Bachelor’s in Construction Engineering and Management, Will went to work for another concrete contractor for the first 10 years of his career.
In 2011 Will was introduced to Lithko’s leadership team through one of our internal recruiters and ultimately decided to join Lithko as a Project Coordinator.
Today, Will is the Area Lead of our Raleigh BURG and has been instrumental in establishing a new BURG in Charleston.
What did you think about Lithko prior to meeting in 2011?
Prior to that meeting, I honestly can say I didn’t have a whole lot of insight into Lithko. I knew Lithko was an aggressively growing organization, relatively new to the markets I was working in. I just assumed it was likely an organization with high level of oversight in all decisions that were made. I figured the organization had a fixed hierarchical structure with decisions coming down from company leadership and was pursuing growth for the sake of growth alone.
What changed after meeting with Lithko?
Lithko leadership painted a picture of the overall company culture, organizational structure and the vision the company had for the future. I was impressed that the organization had enough structure and support to facilitate growth and manage global risk. At the same time, each level of the organization held the expectation that individuals appropriate to their role were ultimately responsible and accountable for the decisions that needed to be made (whether that was in leading a BURG, a Project Team or a crew onsite). Growth was and still is important to the organization in order to continue to provide advancement opportunities for its team members, but it should never compromise having the right folks, in the right seats, aligned to the right projects.
What ultimately led you to the decision to leave a company after 10 years to join Lithko?
Leaving an organization after that long was one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make in my career. After much personal reflection, I came to realize I needed to find an organization that would keep me home most nights of the week (locally based). Additionally, I was looking for a financially stable growing company with a long term vision, a place with a culture that valued entrepreneurial decision making, and most importantly an employer that could provide unlimited career growth opportunities based on performance, not tenure. Lithko at the time was the only company I had explored that seemed to check all of those boxes so I decided to take a chance and join the Lithko team.
Talk about your career growth at Lithko over the last eight and half years.
It certainly has exceeded my expectations I had coming in on day one. When I joined the organization, there was no promise given to me to get to a certain level, but only the assurance that with performance and increased role competency there would be opportunities to advance into other roles with more responsibility. Lithko certainly has delivered on those opportunities. I have been able to move from a Project Coordinator role, responsible for the management one project, to a Senior Project Coordinator overseeing the project management of multiple projects as well as the development of other Project Coordinators/ Project Engineers, to an Operations Manager overseeing multiple complete Project Teams to currently being a BURG Area Lead.
Today you are an Area Lead, what does an Area Lead do?
The Area Lead role is ultimately responsible for providing the leadership over a Lithko BURG. This includes aligning BURG talent and teams to the correctly targeted work opportunities, evolving the BURG through strategic objectives, owning the BURG financial performance and overseeing the talent needs (current and future) and any associated development required for those co-workers. It is very much like being responsible for running your own company.
There are a lot of exciting things going on at Lithko and we currently have over 20 positions available across the country to help facilitate our future growth. Check out these positions or contact us directly.
