J.H. Findorff & Son

J.H. Findorff & Son is a Madison, Wisconsin general contractor and construction manager founded in 1890, with additional offices in Milwaukee and northern Wisconsin. The firm works in higher education, healthcare, life sciences, corporate, civic and multifamily, and self-performs concrete and carpentry. Findorff holds the construction manager contract on the $419.8 million Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a 395,000-square-foot research and teaching building on the Engineering Mall and the largest single academic building investment in the university’s history. Its bid packages there run in staged phases, the standard structure for CM-at-risk work on Wisconsin state projects. The firm is employee-owned.

Thirteen named market sectors is a wide spread for a regional builder, and Findorff lists them individually: healthcare, higher education, K-12, mission critical, science and technology, multifamily, food and beverage, government and municipal, industrial and advanced manufacturing, corporate, religious, retail and recreation, and arts and community.

The self-perform trades behind that are carpentry, concrete, demolition, drywall, masonry and structural steel. The reason a builder keeps six trades in house is control of sequence, and it shows in where those crews travel. Self-perform work has gone to Minneapolis, Davenport and Maquoketa in Iowa, Champaign and Urbana in Illinois, Cincinnati, College Park in Maryland, Blacksburg in Virginia, State College in Pennsylvania, Tampa, Tucson and Seattle. A Wisconsin general contractor sending its own crews to Arizona and Washington is not typical.

Mission critical work includes the American Family Insurance Data Center in Madison and the QBE Insurance Group Data Center in Sun Prairie. Other named projects include the TruStage Foundation headquarters in Madison, the ProHealth Care Central Utility Plant in Waukesha, and ongoing maintenance work at Marquette University.

Two owner-side services sit outside what most general contractors offer. Findorff provides facility assessments, and it provides referendum services, meaning communications and campaign support for public building referenda before a project is funded. For a school district or municipality, that is a relationship starting well upstream of a construction contract.

Offices are at 300 S. Bedford Street in Madison, 1600 N. 6th Street in Milwaukee, opened in 1975, and 226890 Harrier Avenue in Wausau, opened in 2018. Leadership is Jim Yehle as President and CEO, Brian Hornung as COO and Tiffany Scheller as CFO, alongside a Director of Safety and regional vice presidents for Milwaukee and Wausau. The company banner currently carries a 2025 Builder of the Year designation.