Ethan Walton
36, Project Director
McCarthy Building Cos. Inc.
Denver

With a master’s degree in strategic management and a combination of technical and people skills, Walton may have found the recipe for success.

A job tying rebar and placing concrete for a family friend’s telecommunications business when he was 15 piqued his interest in construction. “I’ve always liked taking things apart and putting them back together,” he says.

Walton started his career at McCarthy Building Cos. as a project engineer in 2011 after earning a degree in construction management from Purdue University, where he received the Top Constructor Award in his class. As he worked his way through the superintendent track at McCarthy and refined his building skills, Walton realized he wanted to transition to the business and organizational side of project management.

“I went back to school to get my MBA, and that really helped me start honing strategy and organizational skills,” he says.

Dual master’s degrees in business administration and strategic management from Indiana University led him to his current role as project director.

“Business elements are just very different than engineering and construction. Engineering is really governed by the laws of physics, and how you break down a problem is very different than how you analyze business problems and organizational problems and people problems,” he contends. “Grad school helped me build frameworks for how to make sense of these other elements, which I think helped springboard my career into the director role and hopefully beyond.”

Walton’s projects in the manufacturing, health care, education, advanced technology and aviation markets have ranged in value from $100,000 to $1 billion. Most memorably, he led construction on the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kan., which enables agencies to conduct comprehensive research, develop vaccines and provide enhanced diagnostic capabilities to protect against diseases that threaten the nation’s food supply and public health. The $1.2 billion, 48-acre project was recognized as a 2023 ENR Best of the Best finalist and was named 2023 Midwest Project of the Year.

Walton says some management systems he learned on that project have influenced how he forms teams and scales behavior. The Agro-Defense Facility “epitomizes all the reasons I entered construction,” Walton says of the ten-year project. “Nothing has been built like it in 100 years, and nothing will be built like it in another 100 years.”

Walton is involved with Design-Build Institute of America’s Rocky Mountain chapter, US Green Buildings Council, International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories and AGC of Colorado, for which he participated in its Future Leaders Forum. Outside of work he helps kids build bird houses at the Tennyson Center for Children, an organization that supports mental health and wellness of young people impacted by trauma and other adverse experiences.

“I once heard ‘The goal is not to live forever, the goal is to build something that will’, and that really resonated with me,” Walton says.

While that statement initially applied to his construction projects, he says it now extends to building people, teams, an organization and even a family. “I think that’s my primary driving force–the sense of building things bigger than myself,” Walton says.