Going the Distance

At the crack of dawn on most mornings, you’ll find Josh Gaghen lacing up his running shoes to get a jumpstart on his day. 

Make no mistake: this eight-time marathoner isn’t prepping for a casual jog. He means business.

That same grit and discipline has defined Gaghen’s 25+-year construction and engineering career. Since joining McCarthy in 2013, he has successfully pursued, led and contributed his expertise to a wide array of complex building construction projects. 

Gaghen recently stepped into his most demanding assignment yet: Vice President and Business Unit Leader of McCarthy’s St. Louis office. It’s a high-profile leadership position that involves overseeing business development and project delivery for McCarthy clients across numerous cities and market sectors, including healthcare, science and technology, education, commercial and manufacturing.

Gaghen is actively engaged in project pursuits and client relationships as well as providing support to teams to address ongoing project challenges and opportunities. “I help set the strategic direction and guide teams as we work toward putting our best foot forward so we’re able to win the projects that we pursue,” he says.  

His priorities also include collaborating with his fellow business unit leadership team members to maintain a high-performing culture. “We want to create an environment where every McCarthy team member contributes at their maximum level and has a positive experience,” he says. 

Taking Flight

Born in St. Louis, Gaghen and his family lived in Valley Park until moving to the tight-knit community of Potosi, located in the rolling hills of southeastern Missouri. 

An early aptitude for math and science helped direct him toward a career in engineering. Drawing inspiration from his grandfathers, both of whom served in the U.S. Air Force, Gaghen enrolled in the United State Air Force Academy in Colorado. “Once I started taking the coursework, I realized that civil and structural engineering was what I really enjoyed,” he says. “It felt very natural to me.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, Gaghen completed five years of active service with the U.S. Air Force that began with an initial assignment encompassing maintenance, design and construction projects at various Air Force base facilities. “I really enjoyed it, learned a lot, and the experience helped set me up for a long-term career in the design and construction field,” he says.

While stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in west-central Missouri, he served a four-month deployment to Kuwait in 2001. Gaghen and fellow team members ran the civil engineering group at a joint base co-managed by the U.S. Air Force and the Kuwaiti Air Force. Gaghen still recalls the massive holes that punctured the concrete-reinforced hangars, remnants of the “bunker-buster” bombs used to destroy Iraqi planes during Operation Desert Storm (the Persian Gulf War that had ended a decade earlier).

When his active service wrapped up in 2004, Gaghen relocated to St. Louis and joined a local general contractor as a project engineer. But his interest in structural engineering led him to sign on with KPFF Consulting Engineers a year later to gain some hands-on design experience. “I found it helpful for developing a deep understanding of the design process and discovering all of the collaborative ways that we can work together with our clients, design partners and trade partners involved in the design phase,” he recalls.

It was while collaborating with McCarthy on a project pursuit that Gaghen learned of a potential opportunity to join the company’s federal group in a business development role. “I thought the job sounded really exciting, so I interviewed and got hired,” he says, joining McCarthy in August 2013. 

A Design-Build Trailblazer 

A highlight of Gaghen’s early days at McCarthy was helping to lead the successful pursuit of a design-build project involving the seismic retrofit of the Robert A. Young Federal Building. Located in downtown St. Louis, the 20-story, 1-million-sq.-ft. historic structure is owned and managed by the U.S. General Services Administration.  

“After McCarthy was awarded the project, I went from helping to lead the pursuit to working as the design integrator on the project until the construction team took over,” he says.

Gaghen served similar roles on a winning pursuit that involved constructing the new Next NGA West campus, the western regional headquarters for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. After completion of the design phase, he moved into the role as the onsite project leader. 

The $1.7 billion NGA campus is the largest federal project in the history of the city of St. Louis and also ranks as the largest design-build project undertaken by McCarthy’s 28-state Central Region. “NGA was an opportunity to help bring design-build to the Midwest in a bigger way and demonstrate the benefits of that delivery method for other clients who might be considering it,” says Gaghen, who continues to collaborate with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and NGA in guiding the project to a successful completion. 

As St. Louis Business Unit Leader, Gaghen is eager to continue advancing design-build and other collaborative project delivery approaches that drive efficiency and deliver outstanding project outcomes.