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25 Essential Construction Leaders in Florida Today

  • Writer: Jonno White
    Jonno White
  • Jul 6
  • 21 min read

Last updated: July 2026

Florida's construction industry is run by a specific kind of leader: the founder handing a fifty-year-old company to their children, the regional executive who just inherited a market growing faster than almost anywhere else in the country, and the trade association head quietly setting the standards everyone else follows. As of July 2026, the state's largest contractors are managing a construction market experiencing sustained growth, and the leadership decisions being made right now, who takes over, who gets promoted, who sets policy, will shape how that growth gets built.

I put this list together because leadership transitions are the part of my own work I find most interesting, and Florida construction is having an unusually visible one. Coastal Construction's Thomas P. Murphy Jr. spent fifty eight years building his firm before handing the CEO role to his sons in 2026. Creative Contractors made the same move a year earlier, when founder Alan Bomstein promoted his son Josh to CEO.

These are not isolated stories. They are happening across the state at the same time construction demand is at its highest point in years, and that combination is worth paying attention to.

This is not a ranking. Florida's twenty five largest contractors and its most influential builders do not fit neatly onto one list, and I have not tried to force them onto one. What follows are twenty five people I found through genuine research, verified against primary sources, who are actively leading construction organisations across the state right now.

Some run billion dollar national platforms. Others run family businesses two generations deep. A few spend as much time building the industry's standards as they do building anything else.

You will not find every major Florida contractor here, and that is deliberate. I would rather feature twenty five people I can stand behind than pad the list with names I could not verify. Read on for who they are, how I found them, and what their moment says about where Florida construction is headed.

A note on this list: I compiled it, and I am not on it. I work in leadership and Working Genius facilitation rather than construction, and I put this together because succession, growth and industry-building are exactly the leadership problems I spend my working life on. The people below are listed for their own work, not their connection to me.

Why Construction Leadership in Florida Matters

Florida's construction industry is large enough that a handful of leadership decisions can shape entire regions, not just individual companies. As of mid-2026, the state's top fifty revenue-ranked contractors collectively surpassed ten billion dollars in annual local billings, a figure that has climbed steadily as population growth and hurricane-driven rebuilding keep demand high across the state.

That scale creates a leadership problem most industries do not face at the same pace: how do you hand a company built over decades to the next generation without losing what made it work? Coastal Construction answered that question in 2026 by naming Thomas P. Murphy Jr.'s sons, Tom C. and Sean, as co-chief executive officers after their father's fifty eight years at the helm. Creative Contractors answered it the year before, when founder Alan Bomstein handed the CEO title to his son Joshua. Power Design answered it differently, built from the start as a husband and wife partnership between Mitch and Dana Permuy that grew from, in the company's own words, "a start-up family business in his garage" in 1989 into a billion dollar operation.

Leadership in this industry is not only about succession. It is also about who sets the rules everyone else follows. Trade association leaders like the Associated General Contractors of Florida and the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida chapters shape licensing standards, safety practices and workforce development for the entire state, often with far less public visibility than the executives running the largest firms. Understanding Florida construction leadership means understanding both groups, the operators and the standard-setters, together.

How This List Was Compiled

I chose these twenty five people for a genuine, active, and verifiable leadership role in Florida's construction industry as of mid-2026. I worked from company leadership pages, trade press, business journal coverage and trade association records, and I only added someone once I had a primary source confirming their current organisation, current title and, wherever possible, a direct quote naming them in that role.

I deliberately looked across the whole state rather than defaulting to South Florida, and across company sizes rather than defaulting to the largest revenue names. I dropped several names I could not independently confirm rather than include them on the strength of a single secondary source. The result leans toward Tampa Bay more than I would like, simply because that region produced the strongest, most current sourcing during my research. That is a limitation of this particular pass, not a judgement on other regions' leadership.

Family Builders and the Next Generation

1. Scott Moss

Scott Moss is the chief executive officer of Moss, the national construction firm he co-founded with his father, Bob, in 2004. Under his leadership the firm has grown to employ more than five thousand people across the United States with annual revenue exceeding three billion dollars, a scale few Florida-founded contractors have reached. As Moss's own leadership page puts it, "Scott inspires and empowers his team to create the exceptional."

Moss has been recognised as a Power Leader by the South Florida Business Journal for four consecutive years and was inducted into the University of Florida's M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management Hall of Fame. He holds a construction management degree from the University of Florida and is a Certified General Contractor, and he remains active in industry bodies including the Urban Land Institute's Southeast Florida chapter.

Known for: building Moss from a two-person father-son startup into a five-thousand-employee national platform.

2. Tom C. Murphy

Tom C. Murphy is co-chief executive officer of Coastal Construction Group, the Miami-based firm his father, Thomas P. Murphy Jr., founded in 1988. He took on the role in 2026 alongside his brother Sean, after their father spent fifty eight years building the company before stepping into the chairman role.

The succession was framed publicly as a deliberate, gradual handover rather than an abrupt exit, with the elder Murphy continuing to guide the firm's next phase of growth from the Executive Board. Coastal remains one of South Florida's largest general contractors, and the transition is one of the most closely watched leadership moments in Florida construction this year.

Known for: taking joint leadership of a major Miami general contractor in one of the state's most visible father-to-sons successions.

3. Josh Bomstein

Josh Bomstein is chief executive officer and president of Creative Contractors, the Clearwater-based general contractor his father, Alan Bomstein, founded in 1974. He was promoted from president to CEO in 2024, becoming the company's second-generation leader after five decades under his father's direct control.

Creative Contractors runs close to two hundred million dollars in annual volume, concentrated in healthcare, education and municipal projects across the Tampa Bay area. The leadership transition kept his father involved as founder while shifting day-to-day executive authority to the next generation, a pattern several other Florida firms are now following.

Known for: taking the CEO role at a fifty-year-old Tampa Bay contractor his father built from a mall-store construction business.

4. Mitch Permuy

Mitch Permuy is chairman and chief executive officer of Power Design, the St. Petersburg-based electrical and low-voltage contractor he co-founded with his wife, Dana, in 1989. The company's own account of its origins describes it starting as, in its words, a start-up family business in his garage.

Under his leadership Power Design has grown into a billion dollar company and one of the largest specialty contractors headquartered in Florida, with a footprint that now extends well beyond the state. Mitch has continuously pushed industry standards during that growth, according to the company's own leadership page.

Known for: growing a garage-founded electrical contracting business into a billion dollar national specialty firm.

5. Dana Permuy

Dana Permuy is co-chairman and co-founder of Power Design, the St. Petersburg-based specialty contractor she built alongside her husband, Mitch, starting in 1989. She has been instrumental in shaping the company's success since its founding, according to Power Design's own leadership materials.

Dana's role as co-founder places her among a small group of women who have led a major Florida specialty contractor from its earliest days through to billion-dollar scale, rather than joining an established firm partway through its growth. She remains active in the company's leadership alongside Mitch today.

Known for: co-founding and co-leading Power Design from its garage-business origins to national scale.

Statewide Platform Leaders

6. Michael Neal

Michael Neal is chief executive officer of KAST Construction, the West Palm Beach-based construction management firm he helped build into one of Florida's fastest-growing contractors. He has worked in the construction industry since 1979, with earlier leadership roles at Coscan Construction and Bovis Construction before becoming a partner in Kolter's construction arm, KAST, in 2011.

Under Neal's leadership KAST's annual revenue grew from roughly fifty million dollars to nearly six hundred million dollars over six years, and the company has since expanded beyond West Palm Beach with offices in Tampa and Miami. Engineering News-Record has profiled his approach to building teams and careers inside the firm.

Known for: taking KAST Construction from a fifty million dollar regional firm to a statewide platform in under a decade.

7. Jorge Gonzalez

Jorge Gonzalez is president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of The St. Joe Company, the Panhandle-based real estate development and construction operator behind much of the growth around Watersound and Panama City Beach. He joined the company in 2002 and has served as president and CEO since November 2015, becoming chairman in October 2024.

Gonzalez holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Florida State University and has more than twenty six years of experience across planning and real estate roles. Florida Trend has named him one of the state's most influential business leaders, reflecting St. Joe's outsized role in Northwest Florida's growth.

Known for: leading one of the largest real estate and construction operators in the Florida Panhandle for over a decade.

8. Larry Rooney

Larry Rooney is president of Manhattan Construction Group, a diversified construction operation with a major Florida presence based out of Naples. He represents the fifth generation of family ownership to manage the company since its founding in 1896, making it one of the longest continuously family-led contractors operating in the state.

Rooney has worked across nearly every part of the construction business over eighteen years, including field labor, field supervision, project management and preconstruction management, before moving into market sector leadership and eventually the presidency. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Known for: leading the fifth generation of a construction company founded in 1896 into its current Florida operations.

9. Tracy Hunt

Tracy Hunt is executive vice president and general manager of Skanska USA Building's Florida operations, based in the Tampa Bay area. A twenty six year veteran of the company, he took over Skanska's Florida leadership in a move Construction Dive covered as part of the firm's broader Southeast leadership planning.

Skanska is one of the largest international contractors operating in Florida, and Hunt's role gives him oversight of the firm's building operations across the state's largest metro markets. His tenure reflects a broader pattern among the major national and international contractors, promoting long-serving internal leaders into Florida's top regional roles rather than hiring externally.

Known for: leading Skanska's entire Florida building operation after twenty six years inside the company.

10. Edward Kobel

Edward Kobel is president and chief operating officer of DeBartolo Development, the Tampa-based real estate and construction development firm. He leads the company's investment strategy, execution and capitalisation, according to DeBartolo's own leadership materials, overseeing projects that combine ground-up construction with long-term real estate ownership.

DeBartolo's model, developing and holding the projects it builds rather than handing them off after completion, makes Kobel's role different from a pure construction executive: he is responsible for decisions that affect a property for decades, not just through the build phase. That combination of construction and long-term ownership responsibility is increasingly common among Florida's largest development-side leaders.

Known for: running both the construction and long-term ownership strategy for one of Tampa's major development firms.

Regional Growth Executives

11. Dave Campbell

Dave Campbell is vice president of operations for Balfour Beatty's Florida business, based in Jacksonville. He was promoted into the expanded role in 2026 after more than three decades with the company in project management and senior leadership positions, and he now oversees Balfour Beatty's Jacksonville and Northern Florida operations.

Much of Campbell's current portfolio is shaped by aviation and aerospace expansion in the Jacksonville market, a sector driving a significant share of Northeast Florida's construction growth. He has built his career and his community relationships in Jacksonville specifically, giving him a regional depth of knowledge that a rotating national executive typically would not have.

Known for: leading Balfour Beatty's Jacksonville and Northern Florida operations through the region's aviation-driven growth.

12. Sarah Brand

Sarah Brand is vice president of operations for Balfour Beatty in Tampa, where she is responsible for the development and support of the firm's strategic pursuits in the market. She was promoted into the role in 2022 and has continued to expand her responsibilities within the company's Florida operations since.

Brand's position places her among a small group of women holding senior operational leadership roles at the major national contractors operating in Florida, rather than at smaller independent firms. Her focus on strategic pursuits, the process of winning and shaping new work, makes her one of the people most directly responsible for what Balfour Beatty builds next in Tampa.

Known for: leading strategic pursuits and operations for a major national contractor's Tampa business.

13. Chris LaFace

Chris LaFace is president and chief executive officer of RIPA & Associates, a Tampa-based general contractor. He also holds leadership responsibility at an affiliated Tampa-area paving and materials operation, giving him oversight across both the building and materials sides of the region's construction supply chain.

RIPA ranked among Florida's top revenue-generating contractors in the Business Observer's 2026 statewide ranking, reflecting sustained growth in Tampa Bay's commercial construction market. LaFace's dual leadership across a general contractor and a materials operation is a structure several of the state's mid-sized regional firms have adopted to control more of their own supply chain.

Known for: leading both a general contracting firm and an affiliated materials operation in the Tampa Bay market.

14. Frank Rygiel

Frank Rygiel is president of Construction Services Inc. of Tampa, promoted into the role in 2024 after sixteen years with the company. Founder and chief executive Fred Lay said of the promotion, "Frank's leadership will drive our company toward greater success," framing it as a deliberate handover designed to preserve the firm's culture while positioning it for further growth.

Rygiel's promotion is a smaller-scale version of the succession pattern playing out at larger Florida firms: a founder who built the company over more than a decade and a half choosing an internal successor rather than selling or bringing in an outside executive. It reflects how deeply the succession conversation runs through Florida construction, not just at the state's largest companies.

Known for: being promoted from within to lead a sixteen-year-old Tampa general contractor through its next growth phase.

15. Ryan Young

Ryan Young, AIA, is co-founder and chief executive officer of Interstruct Design + Build, an Orlando-based design-build firm. He has spent twenty five years reinvesting specifically in downtown Orlando, and in 2026 the Downtown Orlando Partnership named him Downtowner of the Year through its Golden Brick Awards.

Young's dual credential, a licensed architect who also runs a design-build construction firm, gives him a perspective on Florida construction leadership that pairs design judgement with delivery responsibility. His focus on a single downtown core over two and a half decades stands out in an industry where regional executives often move between markets every few years.

Known for: combining architecture and construction leadership to reshape downtown Orlando over twenty five years.

Advocates Building the Industry Itself

16. Brian Woessner

Brian Woessner is president of Duffey Southeast Construction and also serves as president of the Associated General Contractors of Greater Florida, the chapter covering both the Tampa and Orlando markets. His dual role means he spends part of his time running his own general contracting business and part of it setting standards for contractors across two of the state's largest metro areas.

AGC of Greater Florida's board oversees advocacy, safety standards and workforce development initiatives that affect member contractors statewide, not just in Woessner's home market. That combination of operating executive and industry standard-setter is one of the clearest examples of how Florida construction leadership extends beyond any single company's org chart.

Known for: leading both his own general contracting firm and the trade association covering Tampa and Orlando.

17. Michelle Anaya DePotter

Michelle Anaya DePotter is chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of Florida East Coast chapter, based in West Palm Beach. She serves as the chapter's executive director, overseeing advocacy and member services for contractors across nine counties spanning Palm Beach to Brevard.

Her role sits entirely on the advocacy and standards side of the industry rather than inside a single contracting firm, which gives her a statewide vantage point most operating executives do not have. Chapter leaders like DePotter are frequently the people negotiating directly with state and local government on licensing, workforce and safety policy that shapes every contractor in their region.

Known for: running the AGC chapter that represents contractors across nine counties on Florida's east coast.

18. Richard Backa

Richard Backa is the 2026 state chair of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida and a business development manager at Baker Construction in Tampa. His appointment to the statewide chair role, announced in December 2025, put him in charge of setting the association's priorities around competitive markets and pro-growth policy for the year.

Backa's position illustrates how Florida's trade associations rotate real, currently practising executives through leadership roles rather than relying on permanent association staff alone, keeping the policy agenda directly connected to what contractors are experiencing on active projects.

Known for: setting the 2026 statewide policy agenda for Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida.

19. Alexis Leal

Alexis Leal is head of major projects for Florida at Shawmut Design and Construction, based in Fort Lauderdale. He joined Shawmut after nearly five years as chief operations officer at Suffolk Construction's Miami office and twenty five years before that at Munila Construction Management, giving him more than three decades in the South Florida market alone.

Beyond his operating role, Leal serves as a board member of the University of Miami's School of Construction Management and has previously served on the boards of the South Florida Associated General Contractors and the Engineering Contractors Association of South Florida. That combination of major-project delivery and industry board service spans both sides of construction leadership.

Known for: pairing three decades of South Florida project delivery with sustained industry board service.

20. Tim Smith

Tim Smith is president and chief executive officer of Wharton-Smith, Inc., based in Sanford in the Orlando area. He was named to the role in 2023, saying at the time, "I am honored to have been selected as Ron's successor," crediting his predecessor directly for the opportunity to lead the firm forward.

Wharton-Smith has operated in Central Florida for decades, and Smith's promotion from within continues a pattern seen across several firms on this list: leadership passed to someone who spent decades inside the company rather than brought in from outside. His approach ties long personal tenure directly to the succession planning conversation running through Florida construction leadership.

Known for: taking the top role at a Central Florida contractor after a four-decade career working toward it.

Independent Owners and Rising Voices

21. Angelica Connor

Angelica Connor is chief executive officer of Stansell Construction, part of the Stansell Properties and Development group. She leads the company's day-to-day operations and its longer-term growth strategy, with the firm's own materials describing her focus on building both projects and the organisation behind them.

Connor's role as CEO of a company bearing her own leadership stamp, rather than a founder's name alone, reflects a shift some independent Florida firms are making as they professionalise beyond their founding generation. Her position is a useful contrast to the father-to-child succession stories elsewhere on this list: leadership earned and built through the operating role itself.

Known for: leading day-to-day operations and growth strategy at an independent Florida construction and development firm.

22. Doreen Caudell

Doreen Caudell is president and owner of D-Mar General Contracting & Development, a Clearwater-based firm that has operated as a family business since 1972. She has led the company since 2001, after joining the business in 1984, and holds general contractor licences across six states including Florida.

Under her leadership D-Mar has expanded from its original scope into commercial development, construction management, large-scale interior build-outs and site development. She is a certified woman, minority and disadvantaged business enterprise owner, a credential that has shaped the company's ability to compete for a wider range of public and private work.

Known for: growing a Clearwater family construction business into a multi-service commercial development firm over two decades of ownership.

23. Chuck Whittall

Chuck Whittall is founder, chief executive officer and president of Unicorp National Developments, an Orlando-based real estate development firm he established in 1998. He has built the company's reputation around large-scale mixed-use and hospitality projects across Central Florida.

Whittall's nearly three-decade run as both founder and operating head of the same company puts him among the longest-serving independent leaders on this list, having built Unicorp from its founding rather than inheriting or joining an existing platform. His projects have played a visible role in shaping Orlando's development beyond the traditional tourism corridor.

Known for: building an Orlando development firm from its 1998 founding through nearly three decades of continuous leadership.

24. Julianna Nickel

Julianna Nickel is a senior project engineer at JE Dunn Construction in Tampa. At twenty six years old, she has already been profiled as a role model for young people considering the industry, telling the Business Observer, "I just always had this natural attraction to buildings."

Nickel represents a different kind of leadership from the executives elsewhere on this list: someone earlier in her career whose visible enthusiasm and skill are being deliberately highlighted to attract the next generation into an industry facing a well-documented workforce shortage. Her inclusion here reflects that leadership in Florida construction is not only about who runs the company, but who is being positioned to run it next.

Known for: being profiled as a role model for young people entering the Florida construction industry.

25. David Diamond

David Diamond is founder and chief executive officer of DeAngelis Diamond, a Naples-based commercial contractor he co-founded with John DeAngelis in 1996. Under his leadership the company has grown to more than eight hundred million dollars in sales, making it one of Florida's largest privately held commercial contractors.

Beyond DeAngelis Diamond, Diamond is active as an angel investor, having co-founded and invested in more than a dozen startups outside construction. That dual identity, operating a major contractor while actively investing in unrelated ventures, is less common among the founder-led firms on this list, most of which stay focused entirely on construction.

Known for: growing a Naples-based contractor he co-founded in 1996 into an eight hundred million dollar commercial builder.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several people came close to making the featured twenty five but did not clear the same bar for a fully independent, current, primary-source-confirmed profile in this pass. Rick D. Amundson of JK2 Construction in Apopka is a genuine industry leader, but unresolved questions about his current status meant I could not confirm his role with the same confidence as the names above, so he is not featured here, and tagging him in the companion post's follow list would be premature too. Craig Ustler, the Orlando developer behind Creative Village and Thornton Park Central, has an extensive and well-documented track record, but I could not independently confirm a personal LinkedIn profile strong enough to tag him with confidence, so he sits just outside this list rather than in it.

Several trade press "people on the move" mentions, including promotions at Catamount Constructors and Turner Construction's Orlando and Tampa offices, pointed to genuinely relevant leaders whose public profile was simply thinner than the twenty five featured here. That is a gap in this particular research pass, not a judgement on their leadership, and it is exactly the kind of gap a future update to this list should close.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The most common mistake when researching construction leadership in Florida is treating revenue rank as the same thing as leadership relevance. A firm's position on a top-fifty contractors list reflects billings, not whether its leadership is doing anything particularly interesting with succession, culture or growth strategy, and some of the state's most instructive leadership stories this year come from mid-sized firms that would never crack a top-fifty-by-revenue list at all.

A second mistake is assuming every executive quoted in a company press release is still in that role by the time you read the coverage. Construction leadership in Florida is moving quickly right now, driven by both growth and a wave of generational succession, and a title confirmed six months ago can already be stale. Every person featured in this list was checked against a source describing their current role, not simply their most recent press mention.

A third mistake is defaulting to South Florida when researching Florida construction leadership, simply because it is the most heavily covered region in trade press and business journals. Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Orlando and the Panhandle all have genuinely significant leadership stories happening in parallel, and a list built entirely from South Florida coverage will systematically miss them.

A fourth mistake is confusing a conference speaker credit with a verified leadership role. Being invited to speak at an industry event says something about someone's visibility, but it is not, on its own, confirmation of their current title or organisation, and several names that surfaced only through speaker listings during this research were deliberately left out for exactly that reason.

Implementation Guide

If you are trying to build your own accurate picture of Florida construction leadership, whether for research, partnership decisions or your own career mapping, a few practices make the difference between a reliable list and a stale one.

Start with each company's own leadership or team page rather than a secondary aggregator. Company sites are usually the fastest to reflect a genuine title change, while directories, staffing databases and people-search sites frequently lag by months or longer, and some carry outdated titles indefinitely.

Cross-check any major title against at least one independent source, ideally trade press coverage of a specific promotion, appointment or company milestone. A single company bio page confirms that a title is claimed; a second, independent source confirms it is current and accurate.

Pay specific attention to succession language. Phrases like "named president," "promoted to," "steps down" or "hands the reins to" are strong signals that a leadership change has just happened, and they are exactly the moments worth tracking if you want to understand where an industry's leadership is heading rather than just where it has been.

Finally, resist the urge to stop once you have enough names for South Florida or Tampa Bay alone. Jacksonville's aviation-driven growth, the Panhandle's real estate expansion and Orlando's downtown development each have their own leadership stories, and a genuinely statewide picture requires deliberately searching each region rather than letting the best-covered one dominate your results.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential construction leaders in Florida right now?

There is no single official ranking of Florida's most influential construction leaders, since influence in this industry spans company size, regional reach and industry-association roles that are not directly comparable. This list features twenty five people verified as currently leading construction organisations or trade associations across the state as of mid-2026, spanning national platforms, regional operators and industry advocates.

What is the largest construction company in Florida?

Based on the Business Observer's 2026 statewide ranking, Florida's top fifty revenue-ranked contractors collectively surpassed ten billion dollars in annual local billings, with the specific top ranking varying by category between commercial general contractors, home builders and specialty trades. Lennar, MasTec and several major national general contractors with large Florida divisions also rank among the state's highest-revenue construction-related operators.

Why is Florida seeing so much construction leadership succession right now?

Several of Florida's oldest family-owned contractors were founded in the 1970s through 1990s, which means their founders are now reaching the point where handing over leadership to a second generation or a long-serving internal successor is a natural next step. That timing has coincided with a period of sustained construction demand, making the succession decisions happening now unusually visible and consequential.

How do you become a construction executive in Florida?

Most of the leaders featured in this list built their careers over one to four decades, working through field labor, project management and operational roles before reaching executive positions, whether inside a family business, a regional firm or a national platform. Credentials like a construction management or engineering degree, a general contractor's license, and active involvement in trade associations like the AGC or ABC chapters appear consistently across their backgrounds.

Are there many women in senior Florida construction leadership?

Women hold senior leadership roles across Florida construction, including chief executive and chief operating positions at firms like Stansell Construction, Power Design and D-Mar General Contracting & Development featured in this list, alongside trade association leadership roles. They remain a minority in the industry's most senior operating roles overall, and organisations including the National Association of Women in Construction run active Florida chapters specifically focused on changing that.

Final Thoughts

What struck me most while researching this list was not any individual company's revenue or project pipeline, it was how many of Florida's construction leadership stories right now are fundamentally about handing something over. Founders passing companies to their children. Long-serving executives being promoted from within rather than replaced from outside. Trade associations rotating currently practising executives through advocacy roles instead of relying on permanent staff.

That pattern says something specific about where Florida construction is right now: mature enough that its founding generation is genuinely stepping back, and confident enough in its internal talent to hand the next chapter to people who grew up inside these companies rather than importing leadership from outside. Whether that confidence holds up over the next five years, as growth continues and the workforce shortage the industry keeps discussing gets more acute, is one of the more interesting open questions in Florida business right now.

I do not know how most of these succession stories will turn out, and this list will look different in two years as some of these transitions settle and others in progress right now come to a head. That is exactly why I built it as a snapshot of a genuine moment rather than a permanent ranking.

About the Author

I am a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, certified through Patrick Lencioni's Table Group, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. I work with leadership teams around the world on exactly the kind of succession, growth and culture questions running through this list. If you are leading a construction or family business through a transition like the ones described here and want an outside facilitator for that conversation, you can reach me at jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Trade and business press cited throughout this post includes Construction Executive, Construction Dive, the Tampa Bay Business Journal (TBBW), the Business Observer, the Jax Daily Record, and company leadership pages for Moss, Coastal Construction, Creative Contractors, Power Design, KAST Construction, The St. Joe Company, Manhattan Construction Group, Skanska USA Building, DeBartolo Development, Balfour Beatty, RIPA & Associates, Construction Services Inc. of Tampa, Interstruct Design + Build, Duffey Southeast Construction, the Associated General Contractors of Florida East Coast and Greater Florida chapters, Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida, Shawmut Design and Construction, Wharton-Smith, Stansell Construction, D-Mar General Contracting & Development, Unicorp National Developments, JE Dunn Construction, and DeAngelis Diamond, all accessed in July 2026.

Next Read

If you found this useful, you may also want to read about leaders in structural engineering, influential engineering CEOs globally, thought leaders in rail construction, and leaders in building products, all adjacent to Florida's construction and built-environment leadership landscape.

 
 
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