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Five Reasons I’m Excited About Gilbane’s 2022 Outlook

January 18, 2022
Tom Laird
At the start of the new year, Mike McKelvy announced his plans for retirement from Gilbane and I was honored to be named President and CEO. I take the reins from Mike at a time when the company is in an incredibly strong position with multiple years of strong growth and company-wide accomplishment. It’s been terrific to work under Mike’s leadership and it’s a privilege to succeed him. As we look forward to the year ahead, I wanted to share five of the many reasons why I’m so excited to lead Gilbane and help shape one of the world’s oldest and most celebrated construction management companies.

1. Growth Opportunities for Our People

The heart of Gilbane is our people and I’m proud that we put our people first in everything that we do. We work with the most passionate, caring, and talented builders in the industry. With the backlog of projects, we expect tremendous growth opportunities for our team members and we will be looking to bring on additional people at all levels of experience, in multiple geographies, and serving in different roles and capacities throughout the company. From superintendents to project executives to marketers and accountants, we are looking for candidates who share our core values and are committed to bringing their best to their work.

Gilbane invests in developing its people and growing careers, and I’m proof of that commitment. I started with Gilbane out of college and joined the company’s management program. Over my 35-year career with Gilbane, I’ve had the opportunity to lead projects, advocate for clients, head up divisions, and execute key company initiatives. Gilbane is a dynamic and energetic company that offers development opportunities in order help people grow their careers in meaningful directions.

You can explore our current opportunities here.

2. Record Backlog

Gilbane is kicking off 2022 with a record backlog of projects in diverse, growing, and emerging market sectors across the country and around the globe. We will be breaking ground on some of the most transformative and exciting projects representative of many industries – from food and beverage to hospitals and corporate headquarters to K-12 schools and much more.  In 2022, we will continue to leverage our partnership with Gilbane Development Company around public private partnerships (“P3s”) and design-build delivery. We are thrilled to partner with so many exceptional repeat and new clients to fulfill the vision of their projects.

3. Our Innovation Culture

We are relentless in our pursuit of innovative solutions that help us build smarter and enable us to deepen the positive impact we make on communities through our projects. At Gilbane, we define innovation through our commitment to deliver shared value for our clients, partners, and our people. We seek to solve problems that address industry and our clients’ challenges and fix operational deficiencies and inefficiencies with scalable solutions that benefit all stakeholders. I’ve been proud to sponsor our Innovation Council which is a group of creative thinkers from around the globe who come together to drive Gilbane’s culture of innovation. This year, we will be expanding our robotics platform “Didge” which was created as a joint venture with NeXtera Robotics. We will be breaking new ground in virtual design and construction (VDC), putting artificial intelligence and automation to work to drive productivity, and testing and scaling innovative solutions and technologies to help us build smarter, safer, and more sustainably.

4. Our Commitment to Social and Sustainable Impact

One of my most recent and meaningful roles at Gilbane has been to steer our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy, which we plan to share in an inaugural report this year. Since its founding over 150 years ago, Gilbane has built buildings and developed communities that enrich people’s lives. Central to the company’s future is our commitment to building on our social and sustainable impact. We plan to use an integrated ESG platform that leverages Gilbane’s many resources to examine and improve our opportunity for positive impact. We are already making great headway and I could not be more excited to share our plans for how we seek to contribute to a global sustainable and inclusive future.

Essential to our inclusion and diversity commitment is supporting an environment in which our people can come to work every day and be their authentic selves. To make sure we are doing the most we can to achieve this goal, we have created Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to make our employees feel more included, appreciated, and heard. Each ERG has a mission and targeted demographic, but any employee can join a group as an ally. The feedback we get from our ERGs influences everything we do, from how we recruit to how we work, and how we serve our communities.

5. Maximizing Economic Inclusion

We recognize the power of the construction industry to move the needle on economic inclusion. I am honored to work for a company that recognizes the responsibility and opportunity to apply an economic inclusion lens to all we do, ensuring our projects do well and benefit the communities in which we live and work. This year we will expand our Gilbane Rising Contractor program to deepen our relationships with diverse and small businesses while helping them to grow through opportunities with Gilbane. We will drive economic inclusion results through superior execution and robust tracking. We will establish new workforce development programming and provide training to our people to help strengthen our strategy and capabilities.

Last year, we worked with fellow industry leaders to launch the inaugural industry Construction Inclusion Week. We look forward to building on the participation of the nearly 1,300 firms from last year and deepening our impact in education, awareness, and action across the industry.

These five points represent a small fraction of the reasons that I am so excited about Gilbane’s present and future. I look forward to sharing more on our accomplishments and successes in the year ahead and working with our exceptional team to deliver the best outcomes for our clients and partners.



About Authors
Tom Laird is president and chief executive officer of Gilbane Building Company. A 35-year veteran of Gilbane, Tom is Gilbane’s longest-serving executive leader and has held numerous leadership roles in multiple regions and service areas across the country. He joined Gilbane out of college as a management trainee in 1986, progressing through several construction operations assignments and leadership positions.
Read more posts by Tom Laird

One Reply to “Five Reasons I’m Excited About Gilbane’s 2022 Outlook”

  1. Kathy Bowman Atkins
    • January 24, 2022

    Gilbane’s track record is as impressive as is your continued commitment to these areas!

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