ADVERTISEMENT
Garney’s Major Penstock Projects
To bury a pipeline in a mountain slope in Telluride, Colorado, Garney winched an excavator down the face of the slope.
G
arney Construction has worked on several major penstock construction projects across the nation—and difficult ones at that. In one project, the company winched an excavator down a steep Colorado mountain face to dig a trench for a penstock. In this interview, Matt Foster, Garney’s chief operating officer for western pipe operations, tells Hydro Leader about several of these projects and informs our readers about the unique company culture that motivates Garney’s employee-owners to put their all into these challenging tasks. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
22 | HYDRO LEADER | September 2020
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about Garney as a company. Matt Foster: In terms of size, our revenue last year was just over $1.1 billion. We are 100 percent employee owned and have 1,550 employee-owners. Having worked for just one company my entire career, I’m often concerned about the risk of looking at things from just one perspective, and yet time and time again, outsiders tell me how special Garney is, which reinforces my belief that we are approaching things from the best perspective possible. I think it’s something about our culture. Once you become an employee-owner, it’s hard to shake that mindset. We hire like-minded people, which is how we maintain our culture year after year. hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF GARNEY.
Matt Foster: I started with Garney 27 years ago, in 1993. I had just graduated from Kansas State University’s construction science program, and I was interviewed by the owner of the company, Charles Garney. He spent the day with me, and I thought that any company whose owner put
that kind of time and effort into interviewing a young new college graduate was the sort of company I wanted to be a part of. Joining Garney turned out to be one of the single best decisions of my life.
