Bob Nanney took a chance back in 1983 on a company that was just starting out. He made the career leap from Blount to Caddell Construction when the Montgomery-based firm was just nine months old. Thirty-seven years later, Nanney has announced his retirement.
Today, Nanney is senior vice president of operations for Caddell Construction, but when he started work with the company, he was the quality control manager, safety manager and project engineer. Wearing many hats, one of his first assignments was as project manager for the depot modernization at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. After that project, he led five additional project teams in the field, and in total managed more than $153 million in new work, including some of Caddell’s iconic projects like the Climatic Test Lab at Eglin Air Force Base and the Atlanta VA Medical Center additions.
In 1999, Nanney was promoted to construction executive, and during the next five years, he had oversight of projects valued at more than $263 million. Then in 2004, he took an assignment to be the project director of Caddell’s largest venture to date — the $333 million new embassy office building in Beijing, China. For the next four years, Nanny worked with Caddell’s joint venture partner to ensure the new embassy was completed prior to the 2008 Olympic games.
Upon his return from China, Nanney was promoted to vice president of operations and then to senior vice president of operations in 2019. In this new role, he has had oversight responsibility for more than $3 billion of work. However, even more impressive that the jobs he has managed is the people he has coached and influenced in their careers.
“He has that smile that makes people gravitate to him,” said Eddie Stewart, president and CEO of Caddell. “It is with mixed feelings of both sadness and sincere heartfelt appreciation that we announce his retirement.”
Executive Vice President Mac Caddell said, “Bob always led by example and has been instrumental in making Caddell the company it is today. Long before it was our marketing tagline, Bob understood that our work was important and committed himself to constructing what matters.”
Nanney and his wife, Jeri, are looking forward to beginning the next chapter of their lives in Mississippi, closer to their children and grandchildren.
Caddell Construction is a full-service general contractor performing work in the commercial, industrial/power, governmental and international sectors. The company has performed projects in every region of the U.S. and in 34 other countries. It is the fifth largest general contractor based in Alabama as ranked by value of contracts awarded in 2019.
