Power Balance: How Lorena Carrillo Balances Her Role as Project Engineer With Her Passion for Bodybuilding
By Grace Calengor
March 13, 2025
A Mexican American and the daughter of immigrants, Lorena Carrillo always looked up to her parents—admiring their work ethic and striving to make them proud in everything she did. But she didn’t know exactly what it was she wanted to do.
Today she is a senior project engineer at...
Family Business of the Future: Ohio Construction Business Goes Woman-Owned
By Grace Calengor
March 6, 2025
Katie Kafarakis has always been involved in her family’s construction business. A third-generation employee, she spent her childhood on jobsites with her father and her adulthood in marketing, sales and operations. In a family business, love and support abound, and Kafarakis was ...
Scaling Your Skills: The Path From Expert to Enterprise Builder
By Anne Lackey
February 18, 2025
Imagine a carpenter you know whose custom work has earned a stellar reputation. Attention to detail is extraordinary and clients marvel at the craftsmanship and constantly refer the carpenter to others.
Perhaps he likes the idea of expanding from an individual operation into a b...
A Man With a Plan: 2025 ABC National Chair David Pugh
By Grace Calengor
February 5, 2025
“I was absolutely fascinated from day one by all things construction,” says David Pugh, partner in the construction practice for national law firm Bradley Arant Boult and Cummings. With a grandfather successful in the foundry business, a father with a storied career at Chicago Br...
Boots on the Ground: Knobelsdorff Hosts Relief Drive in Wake of Hurricane Helene
By Jordan LeGras
January 31, 2025
When Hurricane Helene barreled through North Carolina last September, it left a trail of devastation that uprooted countless lives and destroyed entire communities. In the aftermath, volunteers from near and far sprang into action. Within five days of the storm’s landfall, Knobel...
A National Chair’s Work Is Never Done: A Farewell Interview With Buddy Henley
By Grace Calengor
January 27, 2025
A family person first, Henley Construction President and 2024 Associated Builders and Contractors National Chair Buddy Henley has always prioritized his relationships—with his father, daughters, employees, ABC national committee counterparts and chapter members—because he knows p...
Why Structured Knowledge Transfer Is Crucial for Succession Planning
By Stan Hannah
December 16, 2024
Construction companies depend on the skill and expertise of their organizational leaders to ensure the company’s projects meet quality standards and client expectations while staying on time and on budget. Company leaders, including project executives, head contractors, senior st...
What You Need to Know About the Dirt World
By Grace Calengor
December 11, 2024
The two-year-old Dirt World Summit, started in 2023 by BuildWitt and sponsored by Ariat, is taking the construction workforce by storm in all the best ways. Debuting with an attendance of 750 registrants—including exhibitors, speakers and audience members—Dirt World nearly double...
Ultimate Building Champ: How Justin Wren Went From Professional Fighter to Nonprofit Builder
By Grace Calengor
December 4, 2024
Born in 1987 to “the best mom ever,” Justin Wren made his way from Greeneville, Mississippi, to Fort Worth, Texas, where everything is bigger—even the bullies. “From the third grade to the eighth grade,” Wren says, “I was incredibly, heavily, relentlessly bullied—to the point of ...
ABC 2025 National Chair, Executive Committee Announced
By ABC
November 25, 2024
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20—Associated Builders and Contractors today announced that David Pugh, a partner at Bradley in Birmingham, Alabama, was elected 2025 chair of ABC National Board of Directors during its meeting at the association’s annual Leadership Institute in Scottsdale, Arizo...
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Evaluating the Effect of Historic Masculinity on the Construction Industry's Future
By Evelyn Long
While efforts to fight for mental health in the construction industry have improved, a stigma of masculinity still lingers.
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Three Ways to Optimize Success With a Multigenerational Construction Workforce
By Kayla Bukhin
When companies talk about the benefits of diversity, age is often an overlooked part of the conversation. But the truth is that generational differences in the workplace are just as important as race, culture, gender, disability, sexual orientation and religion.
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Dirt Nerd: How Aaron Witt Built His Multimillion-Dollar Construction Media Company Before Age 30
By Maggie Murphy
Meet Aaron Witt, a young entrepreneur who started Instagramming cool construction photos eight years ago, and today runs his own multimillion-dollar construction media services company. When it comes to construction, he says, ‘the love was always there’—and now, he’s on a mission to make what he affectionately calls ‘the dirt world’ a better place.