Over the past 30 years, Haydon Building Corp. has grown into one of the largest general contractors in the Southwest, doubling its revenue during a global pandemic. The Phoenix-based firm is one of only a few contractors in Arizona that provides turnkey solutions for commercial building, heavy civil, landscape and virtual construction services.

Haydon grew from about $150 million in revenue in 2017 to nearly $300 million in 2020, the result of a diverse portfolio that includes municipal, health care, education, parks and recreation, mission critical, industrial, heavy civil and water and wastewater projects.

Working for SDB Contracting, Gary Haydon founded its building division in 1991. The division became its own company in 1998 as Haydon Building Corp. when it also expanded to add a heavy civil division. In 2006, the contractor added Earthscapes, a full-service landscape subsidiary, to its lineup.

BRIDGES:Haydon’s structures crew sets large concrete forms built for the slingshot piers, part of the substructure of the new northbound SR303 bridge over Grand Avenue (U.S. 60) in Phoenix.
Photo courtesy of Ronnie Dale Louis Photography

Key projects include the Kingman Regional Medical Center, the Northern Arizona University Aquatic and Tennis Complex and complicated bridge work for the Arizona and Texas departments of transportation.

The contractor was recently featured in AZBusiness Magazine as one of Arizona’s top 100 Places to Work in 2021 and was named No. 1 on Ranking Arizona’s list of heavy civil construction companies for the year.

Strategic Growth

该公司的首席运营官马特·卡彭特（Matt Carpenter）说：“我们专注于战略性，而不是建立一切。”Haydon currently self-performs 75%-80% of the work in its heavy civil and water and wastewater division, and Carpenter, who started at Haydon as an intern 21 years ago, says the contractor’s growth is now focused on other types of work they can self-perform.

执行副总裁凯蒂·海顿（Katie Haydon Perry）说：“亚利桑那州的市场正在疯狂。”“这是[确定]我们想要成为谁，如何到达那里以及我们要执行什么类型的工作的日常过程。我们正在凤凰区经历“闪亮的物体综合症”，每个角落都有一个项目。但是我们在战略上更加专注和行动，因为随着我们的成长，维持我们的公司文化至关重要。”

HEALTH CARE:Haydon recently completed the Banner Health Center Plus at Aspera in Glendale, Ariz.
图片由Kevin Korcyzk摄影

Perry is poised to take over leadership of the firm from her father and just completed year one of a five-year succession plan.

海顿不仅在过去四年中翻了一番，而且在大流行期间，其员工的工作人员增加了400多名。佩里说，该公司的增长是由于“一场完美的风暴：与长期员工的团队努力和长期关系”。

Municipalities paused their spending last year, and “this will be a challenge for us, so we’re branching into multifamily, more retail and relying on relationships to potentially drive our business,” she says.

“With lots of industry moving into the state, being as diverse as we are, we can take advantage of the infrastructure and water treatment work,” Carpenter adds. “Our thought process is to keep growing at a responsible rate so that our employees have the same opportunities here that we’ve had.”

Haydon is currently constructing the $60-million Legacy Sports Complex Athletic Fields and Infrastructure project in Mesa, Ariz., a multi-field sports complex with 23 soccer fields, 20 sand volleyball courts, 40 pickleball courts, six sand soccer fields, eight baseball-softball fields, a 50-acre special events area and infrastructure that includes full arterial roadways, utilities and landscaping throughout the 324-acre site.

The contractor recently completed the first phase of the $100-million Hance Park Revitalization in Phoenix. A phased transformation of the existing 32-acre urban park built over the I-10 tunnel in downtown Phoenix, improvements include an amphitheater, jogging loop, skate park, play structures, interactive water features, public art installations, shade elements, gardens, a café, public restrooms and repair of the Central Avenue bridge.

城市绿洲：这座耗资1亿美元的亨斯公园（Hance Park）振兴正在改变凤凰城市中心的I-10隧道上建造的32英亩公园。
Image courtesy of Haydon Building Corp.

人们Oriented

作为一个由单身父亲抚养长大的独生子，佩里说建设在她的血液中。她说，虽然它仍然是“一个男人的世界”，但她带给团队的价值是从业务角度而不是基于其产出。

Perry says Haydon spent the better part of 2017 with a small, focused internal team asking, “How do we take this company from a very tough, sometimes aggressive construction company to a place where people want to work and want to come to work?”

As a result, the contractor introduced Haydon 2.0—“putting the focus on being a people-oriented firm,” she says. Perry formed a team with directors and superintendents that meets monthly to work on their leadership skills and created a companywide behavior of the week, embracing continuous improvement while mentoring and coaching employees. Importantly, the company culture includes making a concerted effort to celebrate successes along the way, Perry says.

“Haydon has a unique ability to look beyond what the architect comes up with and offer outside-the-box thinking for our consideration in the early design phases,” says Joseph Salvatore, principal with Architekton, one of Haydon’s longtime clients.

“They have a tremendous preconstruction group that has a really good handle on construction costs, providing spot-on options for various components and systems. Their data is very reliable; you don’t end up with many surprises,” he says. “They do tremendous analyses for us so that we can fit early program information into a project model and cost model.”

Architekton and Haydon have built a number of public works projects together in Arizona over the past 15 years, including the Casa Grande Recreation Center, Copper Sky Regional Park in Maricopa, Tumbleweed Recreation Center in Chandler and an aquatic center for the Phoenix Country Day School.
“What makes them special is their overall attitude toward working with their clients. There is a mentality you have to have when dealing with public-sector clients—an understanding of the pressure that is put on those professionals. We try to understand what the drivers are and make sure their needs and concerns are always being taken care of,” he adds.

同步中：公园Aldea, a 356,000-sq-ft Class A industrial complex in Phoenix, required careful sequencing to ensure all four buildings progressed at the same pace through various stages of construction.
Image Courtesy of Haydon Building Corp.

“The customer experience is very important to Haydon,” adds Robert Carmona, parks and recreation director for the town of Gilbert, Ariz. “They stay true to their values and beliefs and create a lot of trust with the contractor and project owner. When doing these park projects, the trust levels between our construction teams and town departments are vital, and Haydon takes a lot of pride in creating that accountability and trust.”

Haydon also stays connected, giving back by working on special events and supporting nonprofits in the communities where they build. The contractor contributes more than $200,000 to charitable causes annually.

由海顿（Haydon）建造，赢得了50英亩的吉尔伯特地区公园（Gilbert Region Park），设有独特的游乐场，飞溅垫和圆形剧场。另一个海顿项目，即仙人掌码体育设施，设有八个美国职业棒球大联盟复制品，并被选为年度公园的全国决赛入围者。

As Gary Haydon transitions the leadership of the firm to Perry and Carpenter, he’s keenly focused on mentoring the next generation at Haydon. He says a key lesson he tries to impart is that “it’s rarely an anomaly that gets us in trouble; it’s when you stray from the fundamentals.”

“Growing a construction company is really about organization and tenacity, and just staying with the grind,” he says.

“My intentions are absolutely pure,” says Perry. “This is my dad’s business. He is tough and sarcastic and funny, and he’s the hardest worker I’ve ever met. Every decision I make is about what is the best choice for the business.”