Year Inducted: 2023
Tim McCartney helped steer his family’s highway construction company to become a paving industry leader through innovation and a commitment to expand and sustain the state’s infrastructure. Alongside his professional career, McCartney has been a strong advocate for Alabama’s engineering and technical workforce and economic development.
He oversaw the sale of McCartney Construction Company Inc. in 2018 after working for the company in some aspect since he was teenager, and he continues his service to the state and his profession as chairman of the Alabama Workforce Council, created by the state Legislature.
Born and raised in Gadsden, Alabama, McCartney graduated from Auburn University in 1980 with a bachelor’s in civil engineering. He immediately went to work full time for the company founded in 1945 by his grandfather, a place he had worked as a teenager and interned in college performing a range of jobs. After Auburn, he managed the company’s two asphalt plants.
After seven years of working in the operations side of the business, McCartney moved into the financial side. He learned the intricacies of job costing, estimating, taxes, risk management, human resources, banking, and investment required to successfully manage the family enterprise. During this time, he earned a Master of Business Administration from Emory University in 1993 while maintaining his responsibility of managing the company’s finances.
In 2018, the family sold the company to Birmingham’s Vulcan Materials Company, the nation’s largest producer of construction aggregates. By the time of the sale, McCartney Construction Company consisted of three asphalt plants, two aggregate quarries, over 170 employees, and multi-million dollars in revenues.
One of the company’s last jobs was Anniston’s Eastern Bypass, which was selected by the National Asphalt Pavement
Association for the Sheldon Hayes Award, the highest honor in the asphalt pavement industry, for the best asphalt pavement project in the United States for 2017.
He also served his profession by serving on Auburn University’s National Center for Asphalt Testing (NCAT) board of directors. It is the premier center for asphalt technology research, development, and training in the world, creating more than $125 million in economic impact to Alabama annually.
In 2014, McCartney was appointed as a charter member of the Alabama Workforce Council, created by the Legislature to formulate policies, develop innovative educational workforce programming, and discuss issues critical to the workforce development need in Alabama. The council also works with education from pre-K through the state’s university along with business and industry to develop and improve the state’s workforce. In 2018, he was appointed by the governor to the role of chairman.
His tireless service to the state, engineering education, and his profession includes numerous boards and councils such as the chairman of the Alabama Roadbuilders Association in 2017, and chairman of the Alabama Asphalt Pavement Association in 1987. He has also served on the board of the Business Council of Alabama, the Alabama STEM Council Advisory Board, and the Alabama Computer Science Advisory Board, to name a few.
His support of technical and engineering education includes endowing scholarships with his wife, Laura, at Gadsden State Community College for students studying career technical skills for the construction industry and at Auburn for civil engineering students from underrepresented Alabama counties.
