When Mansour Aliabadi was forced to flee his native Iran in 1979 at the onset of its Islamic Revolution, he had a civil engineering degree, public- and private-sector construction experience and an early inkling that construction management, then an emerging discipline, might be the wave of the future. More than three decades later, Aliabadi has steered the growth of Vanir Construction Management Inc. and its parent company from a local minority business into a global competitor, while raising practice standards for CM professionals in his firm and others.
Sacramento, Calif.-based Vanir, where Aliabadi has been president and CEO since 1992, ranks 27th on ENR�s list of the Top 100 Construction Management-for-Fee Firms, with $67.2 million in 2009 revenue. The firm now is the juggernaut of the Vanir Group of Cos., built around a development unit that was the firm�s base when founded in 1964 as a minority-owned business by Frank Dominguez.