In 1985, Lawson had to get up to speed quickly for another level of leadership when he and his father bought out company founder William Jordan, who had decided to retire.

"The timing was right, as business was picking up after the recession of the early 1980s," Lawson recalls. "Dad would continue running field operations while I would run the office."

Over the years, Lawson developed a management approach that, at times, differed from that of his peers. For example, when other firms retrenched in the most recent recession, W.M. Jordan added offices and expanded its marketing, human resources and IT staff. It also was among the first contractors to provide employees with perks such as onsite gyms, wellness programs and interoffice competitions and events that raise money for charity.

"I gave up on traditional strategic planning 25 years ago because the objectives seemed too focused on profit," Lawson says. "I'd rather focus on continually improving our processes and empowering our people at all levels to feel comfortable about doing things and exploring new ideas. When you do that, you get a lot of good things in return—hard work, good ideas, support for colleagues and the community, and so much more."

Lawson looks for ways to do things differently within his company and in serving clients, says Samuel E. "Bo" Waddill III, whose firm has handled insurance bonds for W.M. Jordan Co. for more than 50 years. "He always says, 'We have to reinvent ourselves all the time,'" Waddill adds. "The difference is that when he says he's going to do something, he does it."

Lawson also stays in the loop on projects. Bruce Thompson, CEO of Gold Key/PHR Hotels and Resorts, which has worked with W.M. Jordan on hospitality projects over the past 12 years, says, "There's never been a time when I called him, during the day or night, that he wasn't up on the details of my job."

The results include award-winning work. ENR MidAtlantic named the company's Asymmetric Warfare Group training complex project at the Army's Fort A.P. Hill, Va., the Best Project in the government/public buildings category in 2014. ENR MidAtlantic cited W.M. Jordan's Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing in Disputanta, Va., as Best Project in the manufacturing category in 2013.

One initiative that mirrors Lawson's philosophy, and a bit of his own past, is W.M. Jordan's paid internship program, which includes as many as 30 college students a year.

"The internship is structured so that they're thinking like responsible business people," Lawson says, noting that interns have the unusual opportunity to assume significant project responsibility at an early age.

Many W.M. Jordan interns have gone on to become what Lawson calls "all-star" company employees. They and other young professionals also move W.M. Jordan further along the learning curve for leading-edge construction technologies such as building information modeling and augmented reality. "They eat it up," he says. "And what's more, they're eager to teach the benefits to our older employees."