Building a Work Family: A Look Into Lithko’s Young Professionals

In today’s day and age, finding a company early in one’s career to have a longstanding, lifelong relationship with can be near impossible. The modern job market is one of high turnover, tenures that rarely last more than several years, and endless job-hopping. Unlike generations prior, young professionals today aren’t finding homes for long, fruitful career with growth at a single company. That is unless they wind up at Lithko Contracting, one of the nation’s leading concrete contractors.

Throughout the industry, Lithko has become increasingly well-known over the years for its unique approach to careers in the concrete industry. The sector had previously been plagued by long travel which strained families and demoralized construction professionals. Thus, Lithko placed its focus on middle-market projects with centrally located teams across the country. Now, with nearly 20 of those units in place, the company has its eye on opening many more.

With roots in making the industry more worker-friendly, recruiting college graduates and young professionals into their ranks has become natural for Lithko. One such graduate, Rian Boland, held three internships with Lithko during her college years before making the jump to Project Coordination at Lithko. Typically, graduates would first work as a Project Engineer, but the team Boland worked with decided to push her forward after seeing her dedication and talent.

“Lithko allowed me to have a very hands-on experience you can’t find in many other fields,” Boland said of her early internships with the contractor. “What I found in the construction industry is everything’s very fast-paced. You always have to be on your feet… That’s fun for me. Who knows exactly what’s going to happen this day?” As a young professional in a field where many of her counterparts are much more experienced, Boland asks questions, too, and the Lithko team keeps her repertoire of industry knowledge growing by the day.

The story of another talented young professional at Lithko, Ashton Crabtree, has become a particularly unique one as well. Crabtree worked through Lithko’s internship program and into the ranks of the company by starting as a Project Engineer. Echoing Boland’s sentiments, Crabtree explained, “I’m a very hands-on person. I always have been a very labor intensive kind of person. So getting that opportunity to go out in the field and actually work and see it firsthand was a huge benefit to myself.”

Crabtree’s personal life, at times, has intertwined with his professional work, too. When he proposed to his girlfriend, he popped the big question on a Lithko jobsite. “I talked to my higher-ups and got confirmation from the general contractor to make sure it was acceptable,” Crabtree said. “For a couple months, I had been working on it and getting everything set up to have my GoPros in the proposal. I kept telling her that I was filming our pours for different things and keeping track of them that way.”

He wasn’t, though. Crabtree was filming the special moment so they could share it with their work and home families alike. She said yes and they’ve been married for nearly a year now. In December, Crabtree was promoted to a Project Coordinator, working with other team and field members. His next step, he says, is to continue honing his skills at Lithko, so that when the time is right, he can make another career jump within the company.

Boland and Crabtree aren’t oddities at Lithko. Success stories of emerging professionals in concrete are everyday occurrences at the company. In a modern job market of uncertainty, Lithko has found the age-old formula works: loyalty breeds longevity. College graduates and new professionals in the workplace are finding a lifelong home for their careers at Lithko, and nowadays, that’s a very rare thing.

BuiltWorlds partnered with Lithko Contracting to bring you this article.