Rick McCally is a fourth-generation mechanical contractor who has spent more than forty-five years making complexity legible to the person who has to decide. He has owned and operated a mechanical contracting firm for twenty years — 250 employees and more than $300 million in total contract responsibility — turned around faltering large firms, and served as a consulting and testifying expert for attorneys nationwide, including ENR Top 100 contractors.
Finding the money others miss
During one operational review, Rick uncovered more than $6 million in unbilled contract scope changes that had gone unnoticed by management. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, on the $185 million central utility plant serving a $4.5 billion facility, he located every dollar of a $35 million overage and the lost time behind it.
His pattern recognition is not a metaphor. Applying to graduate school at age forty, he scored 790 of 800 on the mathematics portion of the entrance exam.
Both sides of the owner's table
When Parkland Hospital built its $1.27 billion, 2.5-million-square-foot replacement campus — then the largest healthcare construction project in the nation — Rick led owner-side MEP programming and design and sat on every selection committee for architects, engineers, and construction managers. He then crossed the table: one of the region's largest mechanical contractors hired him expressly to help win that work, and his team was awarded the $152 million mechanical contract at a $13 million preference over the low bid.
“It was a loss when a better opportunity for he and his family came along. Fortunately, Rick's firm was selected as the mechanical contractor and he will continue to be an asset for Parkland.”
— Lou Saksen, Senior Vice President, Parkland Health (public recommendation, 2010)
The teacher-operator
Rick taught college mathematics for four years while earning his master's degree, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0. He carries the teacher's instinct into every engagement: the job is not to know the answer, but to develop the person in front of you until they can find it themselves. He plans from day one of any engagement to build leaders and train a successor, structured around a three-to-five-year transition to an advisory role.