Suffolk Construction’s Pat Lucey has helped to oversee some of the most prominent towers to go up around Boston lately. You name it: Millennium Tower, Winthrop Center, the Encore Boston Harbor casino. He’s been at the helm. His most complex project today? The skyscraper rising above South Station.
But now, after about 20 years with the company, Lucey will have an even broader landscape to oversee. Suffolk chief executive John Fish has promoted Lucey to the position of general manager of the Boston construction company’s Northeast region, an area that includes all of New England and much of upstate New York. While Suffolk has been growing significantly outside of Boston for years, the Northeast region still represents the company’s largest division based on revenue.
Lucey was previously an executive vice president, overseeing certain sectors of work in the Northeast: commercial real estate, public schools, energy, and transportation projects. With this promotion, he adds higher education, life sciences, and health care.
Lucey has essentially grown up in the firm, ever since his days as quarterback for Williams College’s football team. Like Fish, Lucey went to high school at Tabor Academy, a private school in Marion. He began interning at Suffolk while in college, and came to work there full-time after graduating in 2008. Among his early roles: assistant to the CEO, in which he worked closely with Fish and attended high-level meetings at the company.
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“Pat’s been like a son to me,” Fish said. “He has sat in just about every seat on the bus. He understands the building business and the construction business from the ground up. What he learned very quickly is, it’s not about building buildings, it’s about building people.”
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Fish said Lucey’s promotion followed the relocation of his previous boss Jeff Gouveia, who had been the Northeast GM, to the Southeast market, based in Miami. Lucey now reports directly to Fish, as do Gouveia and nearly 10 others. Fish, who owns the company, estimates that about 1,200 employees fall under Lucey’s purview now. (In New England, Suffolk has offices in New Haven and Portland, Maine, as well as the headquarters in Roxbury.) While Fish has no intention of retiring anytime soon, he said Lucey reflects the next generation of leadership at the company.
Lucey said Suffolk’s culture — a hard-driving one, with a focus on teamwork — is one big reason he has spent his entire career there.
“I’ve had an opportunity to really grow in my career, learn so much,” Lucey said. “What I’m really looking forward to is to continue to work with some amazing people [and] looking to grow our existing client base.”
This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston’s business scene.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.