Regarding some of your more senior colleagues,
either at Cajun or elsewhere in the deep foundations
industry, can you talk about one or two people who
mentored or influenced you?
SC: My first boss at Cajun, Mike Moran, who is now the president
and co-owner of Cajun, definitely was and still is to this day one of
my mentors. He taught me business and business ethics; he taught
me about the driven pile and how to estimate and manage driven
pile projects. He taught me how to treat people, how to be a boss.
He’s definitely a big part of my success at Cajun, in my early days as
well as to this day still.
Another influencer or mentor of mine would be a gentleman
by the name of Kenny Wolf. He was in business development for
Cajun for the last 15 years and just recently retired. He taught me
the value of relationships – not only with coworkers and supervisors,
but just as importantly with clients, vendors and associates.
Those are two people who are special to me and have a big part
to do with my success at Cajun as well as in my personal life.
You’re a younger person who has worked hard
and earned an impressive ascendancy at a major
corporation. From your perspective, how big of
an issue is the generational divide in the modern
professional workplace?
SC: There’s definitely a gap between the young professionals and
the boomers these days. One of the biggest differences I see is that
young professionals, while they have a great work ethic and they’re
incredibly smart and talented people, they value their time away
from the office more than their older generation does.
In other words, with technology, younger workers would rather
be at the office for 40 hours a week, maximum, and then complete
their work away from the office because it’s just as easy to complete
it away from the office, in some cases, as it can be when you’re
there. However, the older generation physically wants to work
in an office and be present there much longer than 40-hour work
weeks. Younger people desire to spend as little time at the office
as possible while still getting the job done remotely. I see that as the
biggest difference.
You’re a proud double-graduate of national champion
Louisiana State University, holding both a bachelor’s
in civil engineering and an MBA. There’s a growing
campaign throughout the country with the objective
to promote construction careers to young people by
essentially stating that one can attain a lucrative and
stable career in a construction trade without pursuing
expensive and time-consuming higher education.
What are your thoughts on this growing push?
SC: I’m a proponent for it. I do believe there’s a lot of merit
in this idea that you do not have to have a higher education
in order to be financially successful in today’s world. There
are major pushes in Louisiana for technical programs in high
school as well as short programs after high school that teach
folks who want to work in the construction industry how to do
those trades and crafts that we need. We need more of those
folks to embrace that and to want to have that career path as
opposed to entering college and competing for a limited number
of professional careers.
I often talk to my wife about our sons and what I hope to see
them do in the future, which is just to be successful in some form.
It’s amazing that in today’s world, a crane operator or a foreman
on a construction project can easily go out and make $100,000 a
year, which I would consider to be very successful. So I’m a proponent
of it and I think that in order for us to continue to grow,
in our business as well as the construction trade in general, that
we need people to enter these technical programs. t
OUTGOING PRESIDENT INTERVIEW
I think one of the biggest challenges for PDCA in 2020
is going to be meeting expectations that members have in
terms of the value that the organization brings to them.
18 | ISSUE 1 2020 www.piledrivers.org
/www.piledrivers.org
