Fresh off its first-quarter earnings call, Granite Construction announced the retirement of CFO Lisa Curtis, part of a core team of executives that engineered the Watsonville, California-based contractor’s turnaround in recent years.
Curtis will retire Sept. 16, according to a news release, when Staci Woolsey, the firm’s senior vice president and chief accounting officer, will step into the role. As CAO, Woolsey’s primary areas of responsibility included corporate accounting, operational finance, internal controls compliance and external and internal reporting.
Woolsey will likely have ample opportunity to flex her corporate accounting skills in her new role, as Granite made clear on its most recent earnings call that it would be on the hunt to acquire more companies, specifically in its materials business unit. Indeed, among her areas of expertise listed on Granite’s website are post-merger integration and restructuring.
The news is the latest example of a CFO leaving a public construction company this year. In April, both Dallas-based Jacobs and Sweden-based Skanska announced transitions in their CFO roles.
At Granite, CEO Kyle Larkin highlighted Curtis’s role in helping guide the firm in recent years.
“The company and I are grateful for Lisa’s many contributions,” Larkin said in the release. “Lisa’s perspective and leadership have been invaluable as we have transformed our company over the last three years.”
Larkin and Curtis have been at the center of Granite’s shift away from multibillion-dollar construction projects, which often have yearslong timelines that make accurate cost projections difficult.
Instead, under Larkin’s leadership and Curtis’s financial guidance — he assumed the CEO position at the company in June 2021, six months after Curtis became CFO — the firm has focused on more bite-sized jobs, including stitching together smaller work packages on larger projects. For example, the company has won and worked on several phases of a larger, $208 million highway and bridge project in the Pretty Rocks Landslide area of Denali National Park in Alaska.
In recent years, the firm has worked to clear from its books projects in its so-called “old risk portfolio,” the kinds of massive, long-term jobs that are often full of surprises. As recently as Q4 of 2023, for example, the company took a $19 million hit to gross profit due to a dispute on its Tappan Zee Bridge project in New York — now known as the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge — and a $7 million charge for its I-64 High Rise Bridge project in Virginia.
Now, Woolsey will step into her new role with those types of projects behind the company. She joined Granite in June 2021, reporting to Curtis. Prior to that, she served as chief accounting officer at Denver-based homebuilder MDC Holdings and held a vice president and controller position at Dallas-based AECOM. She holds a B.S. degree in accounting and is a certified public accountant.
“During her tenure at Granite, Staci has proven herself as an effective leader who has extensive knowledge of the construction industry,” Larkin said in the release. “Staci has the experience to excel in her new role as CFO, and I look forward to her contributions as a member of Granite’s executive committee.”
