2025 Southeast Specialty Contractor of the Year
Wayne Brothers Digs Deep to Get Better Every Day
North Carolina-based Wayne Brothers leaves no stone unturned in its quest to constantly improve for its customers and employees
The civil and concrete contractor has stayed active recently, delivering a variety of services across the Carolinas.
For Wayne Brothers, the contractor’s stated goal is simple enough to understand, with its website touting the firm as a client’s “proactive partner” that will “do everything in our power to anticipate challenges, reduce risk and add value.” Emphasizing the message’s earnestness, the company states further, in bold type, “You have our word.”
Website promises can prove slippery, but in Wayne Brothers’ case, its word has proven to be rock-solid. Based on reported revenue, the pledge to its customers is paying off. On ENR Texas & Southeast’s first-ever specialty firms ranking, which combines its two sub-regions—Texas & Louisiana and Southeast—Davidson, N.C.-based Wayne Bros. reported $236.1 million in regional revenue. Although the company did not report its 2023 revenue, it tallied $173 million in 2022, marking a 36% increase over two years.
In 2024, the contractor earned the lion’s share of its revenue from work in the Carolinas, with $161.7 million in North Carolina projects and approximately $50.1 million in South Carolina work.
Wayne Brothers also regularly performs a wide variety of piping work for its clients.
Photo courtesy Wayne Brothers
On ENR’s national Top 500 Specialty Contractors ranking, Wayne Brothers ranked 199th, with $236.5 million in revenue.
Testimonials tell the tale of how Wayne Brothers continues to grow. One frequent customer, David Wheeler, director of construction with Charlotte-based residential development builder Carocon, told ENR that Carocon hires Wayne Brothers for nearly all of its residential development work in the Carolinas. It utilizes the firm as a turnkey contractor for all sitework, including excavation, installing utilities and building pads as well as paving and related items.
“They’ve got leaders from the top down,” Wheeler says. “They’ve done a fantastic job of empowering all of their employees. It’s such a can-do attitude. They never bring problems without solutions, which makes our job a whole lot easier.”
Another customer who vouches for the firm is Paul A. Hayes III with Mercedes Benz. Hayes says partnering with Wayne Brothers on shutdowns at manufacturing facilities is an “orchestra for engineering, logistics and construction. My colleagues are always amazed at Wayne Brothers’ ability to accomplish so much in such a short time.”
“Our safety culture is not just [about] behaviors, but the mindsets that support those behaviors.”
—Jim Rhodes, Senior Vice President for Civil Construction, Wayne Brothers
Keith Wayne, CEO of Wayne Brothers, says the company takes a “strategic approach to how we want to appear in the construction world.” Specifically, that means representing itself as a subcontractor that’s experienced and skilled in multiple disciplines of work, along with diversified experiences with design-build projects. While the specialty contractor has traditionally focused on concrete as its primary business, Wayne notes that the firm has increased its attention on industrial trades and the civil construction side, which includes grading and heavy construction.
“Our industrial group is growing quite rapidly now, and we’re really expanding out on that service,” he says.
Additionally, the contractor’s recent acquisition of Southern Engineering Co.—a century-old firm—provides the contractor with a subsidiary entity to support project design needs.
Looking back at 2024, Isaiah Wayne, president, remarks that the company was fortunate to have several large industrial projects that were negotiated. “The manufacturing industry was booming in 2024, particularly around steel production, automotive, the chip manufacturers, even the data centers were coming back,” he says.
Following a robust 2024, Wayne notes that some sectors have cooled in 2025. “A lot of the electric vehicle phenomenon just kind of put a pause on battery plants [and] electric vehicle investment,” he adds. At the same time, he says the 2025 surge in data center construction is “keeping us somewhat busy.”
Overall, Wayne says the economic climate for construction right now is more challenging.
A commitment to safety has helped the firm log more than 5 million hours without a lost-time incident.
Photo courtesy Wayne Brothers
Intentional Success
The contractor reported numerous other 2024 successes to ENR, noting that it “achieved major milestones that reflect our growth, innovation and commitment to excellence,” including work on the Wolfspeed Semiconductor Facility in Siler City, N.C. Wayne says the project showcased its ability to “lead in complex, high-tech environments by partnering early with owners, engineers and construction teams through integrated project delivery.”
The company also expanded its Southeast footprint in 2024 with a $35.5-million investment in a new operations center in South Carolina that created 170 full-time jobs. Its current overall employee count is more than 750, which is bolstered by the firm’s reputation as a good workplace. Last year, it was named one of the nation’s top workplaces by USA Today. Additionally, the contractor took the No. 1 spot in Charlotte Magazine’s Top Workplaces among large companies.
Wayne Brothers also provides engineering and virtual design and construction services.
Photo courtesy Wayne Brothers
Wayne Brothers’ year-in and year-out success—financially and otherwise—is no happy accident. Executives tout the company’s culture of empowering employees to proactively bring solutions to problems—likening it to a long and steady journey of finding ways to keep getting better.
During the past eight years, the contractor’s leadership has been consistently and steadily communicating with—and listening to—all employees about how to improve, in all aspects.
“We looked at what is it that we want our people to do,” says Keith Wayne. That question led to the establishment of the company’s four core values: develop and empower people; be responsible and accountable; pioneer proactive solutions; and nurture relationships. From there, Wayne says, “We took these 25 fundamental behaviors that we felt needed to occur across all employee groups and tied them back to those core values.”
Today, over the course of 25 weeks, employees discuss one behavior every week.
“Two times a year, we’re talking about a particular behavior,” Wayne says. “We start most of our meetings by talking about that weekly behavior and how it gets lived out, and what that looks like in the field, on the project, in the office.”
Safety is a prominent theme in these discussions, and for good reason, says Jim Rhodes, senior vice president for civil construction.
“Our safety culture is not just [about] behaviors, but the mindsets that support those behaviors,” Rhodes says. “We’ve put together a safety bonus program where [in 2025] we’ll pay out over a million dollars in safety bonuses to our craftworkers. We’re basically sharing the savings that we are creating by working safe with the people who are making that safe work happen.”
The demand for manufacturing facilities and data centers has brought the firm steady work in recent years.
Photo courtesy Wayne Brothers
Those efforts help contribute to a strong safety record. The firm currently has tallied more than 5 million worker hours without a lost-time incident.
Good numbers don’t automatically equal a safety bonus. Beyond working safely, employees must submit safety concerns.
“We want them to have the mindset that safety is always at the front of mind,” Rhodes says, describing the approach as creating “a catalytic mechanism for them to be thinking about the risks and at-risk behaviors that are around them. It also gives us a database of information to pull from.”
While the company has had a safety bonus program for many years, Rhodes says that in the past 12 to 24 months, “we’ve really poured gas on that program to make sure everybody was participating in the way that we really need them to. We increased that incentive, and people have really engaged and put forth more effort to qualify.”
