Kansas City Chief

Joe Lewandowski walked into his 2005 McCarthy job interview toting a bare-bones construction portfolio featuring snapshots of a drywall job he’d completed in his parents’ basement.

Truth be told, his mom had helped broker the interview through a serendipitous dinner-table conversation she’d had with the wife of a McCarthy project director. 

“My mom came home and said, ‘Hey, you have an interview on Monday,’” recalls Lewandowski, who had recently graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Missouri–Columbia and was in full-on job search mode. 

Lucky for Lewandowski, his drywalling craftsmanship and enthusiasm for the job were enough to snag him an invitation to join the McCarthy St. Louis team as a project engineer. “They gave me a shot, shipped me off to Cooperstown, New York, and the rest is history,” he recounts.

This humble debut catapulted Lewandowski into a two-decade-long mission building some of the largest and most challenging hospital construction projects across the U.S.

As his latest project—the 16-story Plaza West Tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital—nears completion on the Washington University Medical Campus, Lewandowski has transitioned to his newest challenge: propelling McCarthy’s Kansas City office into its next phase of growth. 

In June, he assumed a post at the helm of the office’s leadership team, alongside Director of Business Development Jeff Bennett and Vice President of Preconstruction Brad Schoen.  

In transitioning from construction jobsites to an office environment, Lewandowski has discovered the shift isn’t much of a leap at all. “Running an office is a lot like running a project because it's all about motivating and aligning a group of people around a common cause,” he says.

As he formulates strategic priorities and progresses in developing a three-to-five-year vision for the KC practice, Lewandowski is energized by the incredible momentum that has been generated since McCarthy opened the office in 2013.

The leadership team’s goals include continuing to diversify into new markets and aligning potential growth opportunities with McCarthy's regional and national operating plans. “We can bring ideas and innovations to our local clients from our McCarthy partners across the country,” he says.  

One aspect Lewandowski is not willing to compromise on is the tight-knit culture that has always characterized the Kansas City office.

The Art and Science of Relationship-Building

Known for his outstanding relationship-building skills, Lewandowski began honing this distinctive talent at an early age. 

Growing up in the western suburbs of St. Louis County, his family moved five times before he graduated high school. “While I didn't have to change schools, I did change my afterschool crew a lot, which gave me a genuine curiosity for getting to know new people,” he says. “That experience has been uniquely beneficial for me throughout my life.”

His engineering aptitude and persistent curiosity also laid a strong foundation for a successful construction career. “I was the guy taking things apart and putting them back together again just to see how they worked,” Lewandowski recalls. “Whenever I took early aptitude tests, they always pointed me in two directions: a career as an engineer or a culinary career as a chef.”

Unsure of the exact path he wanted to follow, Lewandowski initially enrolled in the business school at Mizzou. “What I found was that business wasn't engaging enough for me,” he says. “Because I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I graduated, I changed my major to mechanical and aerospace engineering, hoping it would open doors to multiple career paths.” 

Since joining McCarthy in 2005, Lewandowski’s career has brought him to jobsites across the U.S.—from Cooperstown, New York; to Boise, Idaho; to Williamsburg, Virginia; to Omaha, Nebraska; to Dallas, Texas; to New Orleans, Louisiana; to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and to St. Louis, Missouri. 

On the heels of that cross-country tour, Lewandowski and his family are eager to put down long-term roots in the KC region.