ENR’s National Top 20 Under 40
Columbus, OH
Joel Vande Boom
Director of Special Projects—Midwest (Project Executive)
Gilbane Building Co.
Contractor rises to most difficult challenges
Vande Boom started Gilbane’s special project group. After delivering more than $750 million of projects for his first employer, Mortenson Construction, Vande Boom joined Gilbane in 2015 with a mandate to win clients with the most challenging projects. His strategy was to start a special projects group catering to the needs of clients such as Apple, CBRE, JLL, Fifth Third Bank, Bank of America, Dell and WeWork by supporting numerous national customer agreements with them. The special projects group, which Vande Boom grew from one employee to 30, has delivered $200 million and 2.1 million sq ft in projects for such clients to date. The team has 20 customers including the ones mentioned above.