Less than 90 days into his role as CEO at Rosendin, COVID-19 deconstructed construction, creating slowdowns, shutdowns and deepening recession in national and global economies. The San Jose, Calif.-based company builds large-scale high-tech industrial and commercial projects across the country, including data centers and renewable energy and manufacturing, semiconductor, transportation, healthcare and utility projects.
At the time, Greenawalt was entering the No. 1 position in the company, generating $1.87 billion in revenue and in 2019 ranked third nationally for electrical contractors by ENR.
Now, the future of the company was uncertain. “I fly back and forth to San Jose regularly, and this hits, and everything derails. I went home—I’m not an emotional person—I went home crying, asking how could this happen to me? All my I’ve worked really hard all my life,” says Greenawalt, a longtime resident of Gilbert, Ariz., southwest of Phoenix.
“Monday morning comes and, poor me, poor me, I have more than 7,000 people who need me as a general manager. Bond companies and banking companies want to talk about my plans. You get over the ‘poor me, poor me’ very quickly,” he recalls.
To survive, he knew Rosendin had to keep jobs open, maintain work environments safe from the virus, and continue to provide employees with steady work to maintain their confidence. So in early February 2020, he brought together teams to create “what if” scenarios, empowered company leaders to innovate security procedures, provided resources to the IT department to develop secure work plans from home and assured that employees would have their paychecks.
“We came up with ideas and grew our business,” he says. “We increased our shareholder value. We increased our revenue and our profits. We kept our employees safe and healthy, and we provided for their families. We did it.”
Greenawalt worked with DeWalt to design and create a two-handed saw with enhanced safety features.
Photo courtesy of Rosendin
In the Trenches
He was a “Classic” student; traditional school did not interest him. But fix things yes. He fixed cars and lawnmowers and tried to fix watches, though he never put them back on.
After graduating from Sunnyslope High School in north Phoenix, he attended Glendale Community College in west Phoenix to pursue a career in auto mechanics, even though the career was in short supply at the time. remunerated A neighbor noticed his dexterity and offered him an electrical apprenticeship. The program was competitive to get into, but made the vetting process clear.
He had never considered this path but, interested, he quickly learned what electricians did. “I thought you just twisted wires together and screwed in light bulbs,” he recalls with a laugh.
In 1979, he initiated the Comprehensive Employment Training Act program with the assistance of the Phoenix Electrical Apprenticeship Joint Training Committee; he was 19 years old. Eight months later, he was working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in the west end of the valley, riding a city bus at 4:45 a.m. for an hour and later joining a pool of vans with other electricians.
The program was challenging, but the officers around him were good mentors and he enjoyed the hard work. “The apprentices spend a lot of time digging the holes. The first day I was thrown into a ditch with a shovel to remove the rocks and all the cobblestones. I didn’t know what dirty was until I was an apprentice,” he says.
His parents supported him and he had a 50-year-old man hardened by the place accompanying him in the ditches. “He used every curse word he could think of to yell at you to get his hand up faster,” he recalls. “Working with men in the heat of summer was a great challenge; I wasn’t ready for this. But it definitely makes you an adult.”
He says Palo Verde was a transformative, career-changing project, as was Denver International Airport a few years later. In the Valley, some of his signature projects include the original downtown Sheraton Hotel and its upgrade, the renovation of the Maricopa County Courthouse Tower, Phoenix Civic Plaza and the Sky Harbor rental car facility. He currently oversees Rosendin teams on the two largest semiconductor projects in the Phoenix area.
Every time he drives through Palo Verde on I-10 with his son Connor, he proudly mentions that he worked at the nuclear plant as a young man. “That was a huge achievement just to be in it,” he recalls. “I was shaped by my experience there.”
Greenawalt works with a student at Grand Canyon University, where he helped develop a pre-learning program for college students.
Photo courtesy of Rosendin
House in Rosendin
After satisfying the required fieldwork and classroom hours, Greenawalt entered the IBEW apprenticeship program in 1979, eventually becoming a teleworker. He then worked for subcontractors in the Phoenix area from 1993 to 2002. That year, Rosendin hired him as Southwest Division Manager. He was promoted to Vice President of Southwest Operations in 2011, developing a small modeling team in the Tempe office that has grown into the Technology Development Center with over 200 people focused on BIM, VR/AR and integration of prefabrication and data analysis. Four years later, he became senior vice president.
The Phoenix Business Journal named him its 2020 Most Admired Leader and NAWIC honored him that year with its National Safety Excellence Award.
Greenawalt meets with MAZ data center project workers in Mesa, Arizona.
Photo courtesy of Rosendin
Service Legacy
“Mike’s leadership during his career has made a significant contribution not only to Rosendin but to the construction industry as a whole,” Tom K. Sorley, chairman of the board and former CEO of Rosendin, wrote in his nomination by Greenawalt for the Legacy Award. .
Sorley says Greenawalt sought out Rosendin to “set the standards” for the construction industry and to share those standards with others, whether working with tool manufacturers for safer tools, local community colleges for better construction-related programs or within K-12 schools to spread awareness of exciting careers in the construction industry.
These safety programs have included Rosendin’s Stop Work card, the 5Why accident investigation form and the pre-planning form to identify potential hazards. For these efforts, Rosendin received the 2018 AGC Grand Award for Excellence in Construction Safety.
In 2020, when several Rosendin employees lost their homes to wildfires, Greenawalt established safety protocols that included working with local authorities to monitor air quality and provide PPE, and removed workers from work until the air quality improved. Their teams also helped evacuate families and establish temporary power for communities in need.
“Mike’s leadership during his career has made a significant contribution not only to Rosendin but to the construction industry as a whole.”
—Tom K. Sorley, President and former CEO of Rosendin
In 2019, under Greenawalt’s direction, Rosendin partnered with tool maker DeWalt to produce a dual-switch band saw to avoid some of the accidents that had occurred with previous single-switch units. The revised tool aligns with the company’s security culture of caring, sharing, listening and innovating. “We want [our workers] come home every night, with no cuts, bruises or scars,” Greenawalt said at the time.
Greenawalt is a member of the ACE Mentor Program National Board of Directors Advisory Board and the Phoenix Electrical Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee, which helped launch his career. He also helped found the Rosendin Foundation, a nonprofit organization to support community organizations in 17 cities where Rosendin has offices. TRF has awarded more than $1.87 million in grants and sponsors annual summer camps that introduce students to the joy of building.
In 2023, he was invited to be an inaugural member of the Arizona Economic Education Commission, a partnership through the Arizona Department of Education to bring specialized training to high schools to prepare students for careers after to graduate
At the university level, he recently encouraged Rosendin to partner with Grand Canyon University to develop, teach and help fund a 15-week pre-apprenticeship program that saw nearly all of its 78 freshmen pass to a learning
Joe Veres, senior vice president for student success at GCU, says Greenawalt has been a visionary in taking action against the critical shortage of electricians in Arizona and across the country. “Mike is an incredible leader with a great heart for the industry and developed a vision to sustain the growth and need for electricians,” he says.
“I never took anything for granted, and it never crossed my mind,” Greenawalt says. “But now I’m looking back after 45 years. For a kid who starts out in a government program as an apprentice and then retires as CEO of a company like Rosendin: Wow, that’s been quite an accomplishment. It’s been quite a ride.”
