Flyers entering Orlando International Airport’s Terminal C might first notice the iconic prow at the entrance and the vivid experiential media exhibits.

After 17 years of applications, funding debates and design and scope changes, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas, was delivered by McCarthy/Mortenson.

Kings Bay naval base, on the Georgia-Florida border, has been the U.S. Navy hub for nuclear ballistic missile submarines since the 1980s, says the team submission, with operations halted for the first time to enable an estimated $627M upgrade of its unique drydock and other infrastructure that was completed last year.

The Microsoft Thermal Energy Center, a groundbreaking geothermal heating and cooling system that serves the buildings of the tech giant’s 72-acre East Campus Modernization outside Seattle, was truly two exotic jobs wrapped into one.

Rouzbeh Savary became hooked on concrete as a youth in Tehran, when he would frequently tag along to jobsites with his developer-father Davood. Even as a 9-year-old, he was mesmerized by crews casting concrete for his father’s multistory buildings.

Brian Witte was just a freshman in high school when he launched his infrastructure career. “It was a small town in Iowa, and the teacher’s neighbor was the town engineer for a dozen communities,” recalls Witte, vice president of construction engineering for Parsons Corp. “They needed help.

North Dakotan Terry Williams is helping to manage the $3.2-billion Fargo-Moorhead Flood Diversion project, a first-of-its-kind endeavor.

Phil Washington grew up on the South Side of Chicago in public housing with a single mom caring for a family of six. “The people building infrastructure in my community did not look like me,” he says. “I wondered, ‘Why can’t I get a job helping to build my own community?’”

Carla Sciara began working in construction as a design drafter for an electrical contractor on its Four Seasons Hotel project in Manhattan—the first hotel designed by the renowned architect I.M. Pei.

In 1968, the Whitehill Report on Professional and Public Education for Historic Preservation raised concerns about a dearth of tradespeople qualified in historic preservation work.