Hughes Brothers Construction

Hughes Brothers Construction is a civil site contractor based in Wildwood, Florida. Brothers Chad and Justin Hughes founded the company in 2012, and it now has more than 500 employees and a large owned equipment fleet. The firm self-performs earthwork, wet utilities, sewer and gas main installation, roadway work and large-scale site development for residential, commercial, industrial and municipal clients, working within roughly 70 miles of Wildwood across Orlando, Ocala, Gainesville and Tampa. On Oct. 13, Raleigh-based Cardinal Infrastructure Group announced a deal to buy Hughes Brothers for $357.5 million in cash and stock, with up to $97.5 million more tied to 2026 earnings.

The operating numbers behind Hughes Brothers explain how it covers Central Florida with self-performed crews. The company fields 25 full-time pipe crews for underground utility work, runs more than 300 pieces of heavy equipment, and averages 45-plus projects a year.

It did not start there. Chad and Justin Hughes, who had worked in their father’s construction business, founded the company in 2012 as a five-person operation taking small projects; Scott Parrish was the first employee. Ryan Lee has been with the company since inception, and Rhett Niewinski, a licensed professional engineer, is on staff, which is relevant on site development work where design and permitting questions arise mid-job.

The work splits six ways: site development, land clearing, grading and excavation, underground utilities, drainage and retention, and roadways. Heavy highway construction, mass grading and value engineering are called out specifically within that, the last being the part an owner cares about when a site balance or a utility route can be re-cut to save money.

Safety is framed around authority rather than policy. Crews carry stop work authorisation, and the company says it goes beyond standard industry expectations on the point. For a civil contractor running that many simultaneous crews across four metros, who can halt a job matters more than what the manual says.

Named projects give a sense of the mix: Langley Estates Phase 1A, Groveland Central Logistics and Twisted Oaks, spanning residential subdivision, industrial logistics and site development work. D.R. Horton appears among the partner logos, consistent with the residential volume side of the business. Clients span industrial, commercial, residential and municipal.

The service radius is roughly 70 miles from Wildwood, which the company calls its hometown, reaching Orlando, Ocala, Gainesville and Tampa.