Building at Hyperscale

About 30 miles north of Milwaukee, construction trailers buzz with the kinetic energy and logistical precision of a jobsite firing on all cylinders.

Inside the construction fence, you’ll find Jeremy Witts at the center of the action. As Vice President of Operations, he serves as McCarthy’s top onsite leader on the Lighthouse data center campus taking shape in Port Washington, Wisconsin. 

McCarthy, in a joint venture with Turner Construction, is constructing two buildings within the hyperscale development for Vantage Data Centers, a global leader in digital infrastructure. 

Six months ago, the joint venture office opened with just over 40 people. Today, Witts helps oversee a combined staff of more than 200 operations professionals drawn from all five of McCarthy’s national regions and various business units within partner firm Turner Construction. Step outside the trailers, and another 250 McCarthy craft workers are actively pushing work across a massive, fast-moving canvas.

Among Witts’s primary roles is fostering a cohesive team culture. “My typical day is completely people-driven,” Witts shares. “Meshing these two distinct corporate cultures, keeping them aligned, and maintaining a safe, fluid schedule is where I spend the majority of my time.”

Despite the project’s breakneck pace, Witts says the JV team has cohesion. “The strengths of each company complement the other perfectly,” he says. “Our shared execution potential is much higher than if we were tackling it alone."

A Bridge to Something Bigger 

A native of Decatur, Illinois, Witts got his introduction to construction from his dad, who drove a dump truck for a local excavation company.

Though he didn't initially envision a construction career for himself, a high school physics project changed that trajectory. Tasked with building a toothpick bridge over winter break, Witts was surprised when his creation outperformed his peers in the classroom weight test. “I literally had no idea what I was doing, but it stood up well,” Witts laughs. “I thought, ‘That was actually kind of fun. I wonder if I could do something with this.’”

He ended up earning a scholarship at a local community college and started completing a civil engineering curriculum before pausing his studies to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves. 

When he returned from recruit training, Witts explored options for continuing his education and discovered the construction management program at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. 

Prior to beginning classes there, he spent several months working in the field for a geotechnical firm, an experience that solidified his career aspirations. 

While pursuing a construction management degree, Witts also gained hands-on experience as an intern with a large national general contractor in Chicago and a regional G.C. in East Peoria. 

Based on those experiences, he narrowed his focus to securing a full-time job at a national construction firm that would provide him with opportunities to travel. 

McCarthy entered the picture at a college job fair Witts attended his senior year. Coincidentally, a division vice president from McCarthy’s Southern Pacific Region also decided to participate in the job fair while visiting his daughter, a Bradley student. That fortuitous encounter led to two eventual McCarthy job offers: one in St. Louis and the other on the West Coast.   

Opting to stay close to his Midwest roots, Witts joined McCarthy’s St. Louis office full-time in January 2004.

Witts’s formative years at McCarthy encompassed an eclectic array of project experiences—from an 18-story concrete high-rise condo project in Clayton, Missouri, to an industrial turbine generator project in Venice, Illinois.

He balanced that project work with continued military service. Witts served six years in the Marine Corps Reserves as a combat engineer and an additional 15 years in the Navy Seabees as a builder, retiring in 2019. He deployed to Iraq twice—first during the initial 2003 invasion with the Marines, and a second time for a seven-month tour as a Humvee gunner providing convoy security with the Seabees.

Travelin’ Man

Witts then embarked on a series of healthcare construction assignments across the U.S.

After cutting his teeth on an expansion at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in St. Louis, he temporarily relocated to Boise, Idaho, to work on an expansion at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. 

In Omaha, Witts worked on Lakeside Hospital (now CHI Health Lakeside), one of five campus expansions McCarthy oversaw for Alegent Health.

Next on the docket was Mount Vernon, Illinois, where he managed the construction of a medical office building adjacent to the SSM Health Good Samaritan replacement hospital that McCarthy had previously built.

After an EF5 tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, in 2011, Witts spent three years as part of the team delivering the fast-track Mercy Hospital Joplin replacement facility. From there, he moved to Springfield, Missouri, and managed a multi-phase heart hospital expansion and dietary addition for Mercy.

Then, he oversaw construction of a new Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and a variety of continuous works assignments for Mercy and Phelps Health in Rolla, Missouri. His final healthcare assignment was an Emergency Department and ICU expansion at Mercy Fort Smith.