Experienced field supervisor joins Carl A. Nelson & Company

7 months, 2 weeks ago

Carl A. Nelson & Company's newest project superintendent arrived on the job in April with more than 40 years of construction industry experience on his resume. Steve Ray, a native of New England, will begin his tenure with the firm leading a project for the IKM-Manning Community School District in western Iowa.

Steve, who grew up in New Hampshire and spent the early years of his career on the East Coast doing fabrication and assembly of post-and-beam frame structures, currently resides in the Red Oak/Villisca, Iowa, area, not far from the job site where he will supervise a Construction Management Agency project to construct an addition and renovations at IKM-Manning CSD in Manning, Iowa.

The size and type of work performed by Carl A. Nelson & Company (CANCO), and the experience of the office and field leaders, attracted Steve to the firm.

"I'm looking for the last job I'll ever have," he said, explaining he figures on working for another 10 years or so. During that time, he said, he is hopeful to get involved in estimating and some project management, with his goal being to "continue to expand the size of my hat."

Steve grew up in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire, where he enjoyed skiing, dirt biking, hiking, camping, cave exploration, hunting and fishing. He left that area in the late 1980s, amid an economic downturn, and moved to South Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo. With the recovery in full swing, Steve said, he arrived in Myrtle Beach at 3 a.m., and had a job by 9 a.m. that day. He got work with a commercial contractor installing metal studs on various projects that transitioned to concrete and steel work. During that time, Steve met his late wife, Wanda, while she was vacationing at the beach. More commercial work followed, including in healthcare, military, education and industry. In 2000, needing a change in scenery after his wife passed away of breast cancer, Steve relocated to the Omaha, Nebraska, area. During that early period in the Midwest, he stepped away from construction leadership roles for about a decade, until a year spent on a project for U.S. Strategic Air Command replanted that seed. He spent the next six years with an Omaha contractor before moving on to find more interesting work.

Away from the office, Steve enjoys motorcycling, and reading about quantum physics and ancient civilizations. He is a science fiction fan, and enjoys traveling, too, now having visited most of the 50 states.