McCarthy Building Companies, Inc announced last week that Michael Gritters has been promoted to Executive Vice President, Healthcare Services for the firm’s Southern California Division. Gritters takes the place of Steven Mynsberge, who retired in December 2012 after 33 years at McCarthy.

In his new role, Gritters is in charge of identifying and pursuing new healthcare projects and supervising the delivery of preconstruction and construction services on all healthcare projects in Southern California. This is a pretty big responsibility considering McCarthy currently has about 11 healthcare projects totaling approximately $2 billion underway in this region.

To stay busy and competitive, he tells me that one of his first goals in his new position is to enable and encourage field operations staff to utilize a "structured yet flexible" approach to meet the evolving needs of client’s, and to continue to provide collaborative building approaches, such as a Lean Methodology of construction to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

"Much more than a buzzword, the Lean philosophy requires that all members of a project team look at the project with a different lens," says Gritters. "This methodology works best when we bring an open mind and exhibit a willingness to be more flexible in our approach to designing and building projects so that the result is optimized for all members of the team."

On top of this, Gritters says the company will also stay on the cutting edge of hi-tech tools such as BIM.

"BIM is probably the most revolutionary advancement I have ever witnessed in the healthcare construction marketplace," he says. "Bottom line, if you have expert healthcare builders working collaboratively in a virtual environment, the result is a very successful project outcome. BIM provides us with the technology to model, coordinate, estimate, plan and then virtually build a structure before construction commences."

Gritters, who has been with McCarthy for 27 years, says the use of technology such as BIM has also given his industry mobility.

"All of our healthcare projects are utilizing BIM in the field," he says. "The result is an increase in efficiency and quality, with a corresponding decrease in cost and time required to build these complex projects."

Throughout his career at McCarthy, Gritters has played a significant role in the company’s success and growth of its healthcare business. He has been involved in over $3 billion in healthcare work, aiding in all stages of the project from marketing and preconstruction through project close-out. 

In addition to healthcare building projects, Gritters has also been responsible for the management of retail, parking structure and hotel projects as well as six entertainment facilities for the Walt Disney Company.

Gritters holds a bachelor of science degree in construction engineering from Iowa State University and is a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional BD+C.  He was an active board member of the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of California Orange County District and is currently a member of the AGC Union Craft Committee. He is actively involved with community organizations such as the Children’s Hospital of Orange County’s Corporate Partnerships committee and the March of Dimes.