History

In 1903, we incorporated and became McCarthy Improvement Company; the same time government initiatives to create roads and highways in America became popularly known as improvement projects. We paved numerous roads throughout Iowa and Illinois and constructed the foundation of the Centennial Bridge across the Mississippi River. By the 1920s, we employed over 500 workers at the peak of the construction season. This remarkable growth was largely due to the reputation we earned for performing quality work.

After establishing ourselves as paving specialists, we began to diversify, fulfilling contracts for building rights-of-way and laying tracks on Pennsylvania, New York Central, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Santa Fe, and Southern Railroads. When Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Bill in 1927, we extended our services to construct numerous locks and dams along the Mississippi River.

In the thirties, we worked as the general contractor for Lock and Dam No. 21 at Quincy, IL, Dam NO. 10 at Guttenberg, IA, Lock No. 5-A at Winona, MN, Lock and Dam No. 13 at Clinton, IA and extended the river walls of Lock and Dam No. 11 at Eagle Point.

Water-related construction continued throughout the forties and fifties as we expanded throughout the Midwest to the Southeast. Projects included the building of the $3.5M Santee-Cooper Dam near Charleston, SC; flood-control measures on the Ohio River; the massive $11M Fort Randall Dam project in Yankton, SD; and the Kansas Turnpike.

The sixties and seventies marked a strong return to roadway paving. Awarded contracts for the Illinois Toll Way and sections of Interstates 57, 74, 80, and 235 brought us back to the core expertise we refined over the course of seventy years.

Paving projects in the eighties included Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, SD; a $16.2M job repaving the base’s airstrip for the B-1 Bomber; construction of Illinois Interstate 5 from Rock Island to Whiteside County; runways and taxiways at the Nashville International Airport in Tennessee, the Quad City International Airport in Illinois, Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta; and extensive widening of Interstates 75 and 85 in Georgia, to name a few.

By 1997, we reached a century of service. While we diversified the scope, our focus remained on our core expertise—concrete and asphalt paving. Quality had become our benchmark, but we concentrated on raising the bar higher.

Our internal raising of the bar paralleled with increased demands coming from state transportation agencies and other project owners. This energized our efforts to pioneer partnership in testing and Quality Control/Quality Assurance.

We believed partnering would foster solid working relationships and outstanding quality. Having fully embraced this concept, we were thrilled when the Iowa Department of Transportation began to implement the partnering model into some of their projects in 1992. IDOT’s goal was to have one partnering project in each of its six regions. We volunteered to partner on two projects in that first year.

In addition to being first to partner on projects in the state of Iowa, we spearheaded partnering firsts in states throughout the Midwest and Southeast, constructing the first partnership project by the Illinois DOT; the Knox County I-74 concrete overlay, for which we earned the national ACPA award, and orchestrated the first partnered project by the Georgia DOT; the Atlanta to Athens Highway 316, known as University Parkway.

We are particularly proud of urging the Nashville Airport Authority to participate in their first partnering project, the new construction of 8,000-foot Runway 2C/20C. Being a very aggressive project to start in October and be open to air traffic by the following May 1, it was especially indicative of the potential benefits partnering can provide.

The NAA agreed to partner, largely due to commitments to American Airlines, but they imposed a $20,000-a-day liquidated damages clause if we did not meet the stringent deadline. It was rewarding to have completed the job on time, but receiving the Airport Authority’s crystal commendation, recognizing the effectiveness of our working style, made it even more so.

As our name implies, McCarthy Improvement is dedicated to the continuous improvement of quality, efficiency, and reliability in the heavy construction industry, constantly evolving the way business is done to meet those goals. In the new millennium, we acquired Foley Construction,  Bellamy Bridge Builders, and recently Ballenger Paving to meet this aim through turnkey solutions.

Our turnkey approach is geared to bring projects in on time in the best possible way. Our team takes initiative to save clients money through efficiency and reliability, and because we work together, scheduling is proactive and fine-tuned. Customer satisfaction is what maintains the longevity of any company, and our trinity of experts has a longstanding track record for meeting and exceeding private and public sector needs alike.