Neal Ernest

Relentless Ally

Leading With Empowerment and Accountability

For Florida Vice President of Operations Neal Ernest, construction was the family business. Having grown up watching his father work in contracting, Neal’s joining the industry was something of a destiny and family legacy, and a path he pursued with dedication.

In his 27 years in the industry since, all with Balfour Beatty and rising from assistant superintendent all the way to his current leadership position, Neal has left an indelible mark on some of our most recognizable and landmark projects like the Broward County Convention Center and multiple landmark hotels and hospitality spaces. Across Florida and even in Texas, Neal’s project and operations leadership has led to success after success, creating day-to-day project environments where our teams, trade partners and stakeholders are empowered to make informed and confident decisions.

As Balfour Beatty builds on our decades-long record of success in Central Florida, Neal’s leadership ensures that our clients in every market – hospitality, entertainment, special projects, higher education and more – know they have a trusted ally in the entire Balfour Beatty team.

It’s a Family Business

Neal’s early exposure to construction was all from watching his father—hammers-in-hand and dogged field work—but his education at the University of Florida Rinker School of Construction Science prepared him for an advanced project management track.

But Neal couldn’t let go of his hands-on roots that easily.

“I planned to graduate, spend some years in the field and then get back into project management. But all throughout school, I spent my summers wearing a toolbelt, running carpentry crews while my classmates took internships,” Neal recalls. “After a week of my first job with Balfour Beatty, I knew I wanted to be the general superintendent running big work.”

And run big work he certainly did. In the decades following, he would go on to provide exceptional client service and precision field management on monumental projects such as the Orlando Magic's AdventHealth Training Center, the Lake Nona Wave Center Hotel, the Gaylord Texan, the Loews Sapphire Falls Resort at Universal Orlando, the Cabana Bay Beach Resort and countless other projects for our most prestigious hospitality and entertainment clients in Orlando.

The Cabana Bay Beach Resort at Universal Orlando

At every step, Neal says he was surrounded by leaders who provided him with three keys to success and strategies he still implements to help project teams accomplish great things: opportunity, empowerment and accountability. Those leaders recognized Neal’s dual-threat talents as a field leader and strategic business visionary and gave him every opportunity to take on new challenges, gracefully correct mistakes and learn how to be the best possible client advocate.

Taking on Big Projects

Those opportunities to step out and lead through challenging situations started right away. On Neal’s very first project as an assistant superintendent – a landmark hospitality project that is all but a household name – he was invited to step up when the lead superintendent required emergency surgery just months before substantial completion.

“All of a sudden, I became an area superintendent. I’m sitting in all the owner’s meetings, and I was still young enough to think I could easily handle it,” Neal recalls. “It was a highly complex job on an incredibly accelerated schedule, but we successfully completed a project with thousands of workers, 24/7 operations and world-class finishes, theming and quality control.”

With a clear knack for mega project management and a talent for hospitality in particular, Neal later joined the team for the ambitious Gaylord Texan Hotel and Resort in the Dallas, Texas suburbs. When the project was put on temporary hold following the events of September 11, 2001, Neal was again able to step up and develop his project expertise and client advocacy under the tutelage of several of our strongest Texas leaders and hospitality experts like Michael Hite and Chad Brewer.

The Gaylord Texan, one of Neal's first opportunities to learn every square foot of a mega hospitality project

“With the project on hold for 10 months, I took on a quasi-preconstruction role preparing for it to restart,” Neal says. “By the time it did, I knew every bit of that 2.8-million-square-foot complex and can proudly say we helped create a successful job through value engineering, schedule accelerations and proactive procurement even in a tumultuous market.”

Leading With Lean

Neal’s operations expertise also includes an extensive background in lean construction principles and a proven track record of lean successes, including early involvement with the Lean Construction Institute (LCI). While lean, as Neal sees it, seeks to address some of the inherent inefficiencies in the construction process and general contracting model, he believes its greatest potential for industry change stems from increased collaboration.

“From my involvement with LCI and lean experience on our many projects, I’ve experienced firsthand the power of getting more people involved in project decision-making,” Neal says. “More involvement at all levels paradoxically creates more efficient projects than top-down directives, but making it work requires first-rate communication, a collaborative spirit and the leadership skills to educate and empower your staff, partners and stakeholders.”

Of course, where the lean rubber meets the project challenge road can become exceptionally complex. Even so, the principles by which Neal has always led his projects still apply: set clear and immovable goals, give your teammates and clients the tools to succeed and hold every party accountable for success. “Communication” is less an element of the formula and more the substrate in which it exists, undergirding and enhancing every step of the project.

On Phase II of the Broward County Convention Center and Hotel mega project, for example, unforeseen design challenges with 160-foot structural steel trusses created a complex challenge for our team and trade partners. After disassembling some six weeks’ worth of steel work, the team had to recover—and quickly.

“Once you identify a problem or potential problem, you first have to communicate to the team that there is a problem, collaborate on a solution and continue to hold the team accountable through implementation,” Neal says. “On BCCCH, we knew our next milestone date was permanent power. Missing that date was not an option.”

Through aggressive and intentional collaboration between our team, our steel trade partner and design partners, Neal and the BCCCH project team carved a clear pathway to success. Schedules were greatly accelerated, site logistics became even more complex, but the collaborative effort paid off as the team brought the project back on track.

Loews Sapphire Falls Resort at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida

“On every project large or small, empowerment and accountability are just two sides of the same coin. The one cannot exist without the other,” Neal says. “These are foundational principles that leaders once instilled in me and that I now pass on to all of our teammates – stand in the gaps for our people and our clients, learn from mistakes and commit to a people-first, collaborative and communicative approach that always creates success.”

Looking Ahead

As Balfour Beatty looks ahead to extending our Central Florida legacy, building on the success of projects like Manor West River in Tampa and now new opportunities at the University of Florida, operational leaders like Neal prove the strength of our relationship-driven business.

Balfour Beatty’s greater Florida portfolio is dominated by repeat business for precisely this reason: after just one project, clients come to understand that Balfour Beatty’s leaders like Neal don’t make unilateral, top-down decisions and pass the consequences on to clients. Instead, they create inclusive and rewarding environments where every stakeholder is equally empowered to share our clients’ values, equally empowered to implement creative and lean solutions and equally empowered to create success.