CEO Turnover Surge Is a Wake Up Call for Infrastructure Leaders

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WAYNE RIVERS: Hello, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.

This week I want to talk about CEO turnover. The CEO Turnover Surge is a wake-up call for infrastructure leaders. This is from Forbes, so I thought, "Wow, this is really interesting. Not only is it a national publication, but it also addresses specifically our market." So, it's written by Khaled Naja, who is the CEO of Core Group Partners, and he says in the article a record number of CEOs have exited their posts in the past year. I think we've echoed this in the past.

Now what about this is important to you? Well, any number of you are infrastructure people. You're heavy civil contractors, but it applies to all contractors, doesn't it? It doesn't matter exactly what sector you're in.

So let me read quickly what he begins writing about. "The infrastructure sector, often considered stable and slow moving, is not immune to this churn." CEO Turnover he means. "In fact, we may be more vulnerable than we think. The turnover doesn't just affect leadership, it ripples through long-term projects in public trust. Infrastructure initiatives span years, even decades, and frequent CEO changes can disrupt momentum, delay critical timelines, and raise concerns among government partners and communities alike. For an industry where consistency underpins success, leadership volatility is a real risk to delivering public outcomes. We sit at the intersection of government, capital markets, and public trust." Wow, that's really well said. "While commercial CEOs face market fluctuations, infrastructure executives wrestle with aging systems, public scrutiny, and the paradox of being asked to do more with less and do it much faster." Dirty little secret, that's all contractors, not just infrastructure." Infrastructure leaders don't just manage assets; we manage public outcomes."

So really a good wake-up call, you might say, that our industry potentially, because projects last long, sizable projects last longer than ever before potentially, and succession and turnover represent a real risk.

Okay, why does he say there's a turnover spike? He says three things. I'm sorry, five things. He said four things, I'm going to add one. Funding volatility is one of them. Agree. Sector disruption, that's all. He also made the note that infrastructure contractors are often diversified. They have different divisions, and each division faces its own challenges, which means that multiplies the challenges for the senior leaders. Time compression, that's a fact in every element of construction. Talent challenges, we've talked about that before. And the one that I add is simple demographics. If the speaker at AGC two years ago was right, and the average construction CEO is 61 years old, well that was two years ago, so let's make it 63, well then simple demographics means that there's going to be more turnover at the CEO level.

All right, five suggestions. He says, "What we need is a new playbook." Five suggestions for how to combat this CEO turnover issue. Number one, redefine the role around agility. Be more entrepreneurial, lead like entrepreneurs, and drive transformation in the organization versus just very modest, incremental change, growth, and improvement.

Second thing, empower your teams. He said, "The infrastructure sector has traditionally been top-down command and control." Again, that's all construction. You need good people, and you need to let your good people be good. You need to turn them loose to do the things that they're capable of doing so that they can multiply your efforts."

The third thing, treat outside help as a strategic advantage. He says use it as a force multiplier. So to the degree you can have subcontractors on your projects, potentially, that's a one way to do that.

And then the fourth thing, lead with transparency, a basic leadership tenet. The fifth thing is make innovation a discipline. He says, "Build your insight engine." Like for example, if you're a web organization, it could be click-throughs or if you're a manufacturer, it could be throughput. But develop your own insight engine, what we might call a dashboard, so that you can track the innovations that you're making and the impact they're having on your organization.

So, sort of a timely and potentially very important article as it relates to heavy civil contractors. Let me finish with this. "The CEOs stepping down aren't all failing. Some are fleeing outdated systems. Some are ahead of the curve. But for those of us in infrastructure where capital meets community, staying in the seat requires more than resilience. It now demands reinvention. We're not just managing projects; we're shaping the communities and economies of tomorrow."

Take it to heart. Let me know what you think, [email protected], and this is Wayne Rivers at PCA, where We Build Better Contractors.

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