Our Culture
About Us
Wholly owned by our employees, Lewis is the oldest locally owned builder in the Northwest. Founded in 1886, we're known for some of the most iconic and innovative projects across the commercial, corporate, data center, education, healthcare, life sciences, and multifamily markets.
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Our History
1886
Newton T. Lease starts a carpentry business in Cascade, Montana, later forming Lease Leigland with H.S. Leigland.
Our History
1929
Newton Lease passes away, and Howard Lease acquires his father’s stake in Lease Leigland at the start of the Great Depression.
Our History
1939
The company moves to Seattle in search of opportunities and finds success on a variety of private and public sector projects, most notably the Main Terminal at Sea-Tac Airport (completed in 1947).
Our History
1957
Jim Crutcher, Howard Lease’s son-in-law, is hired. He becomes president in 1983, during which time the company expands to Oregon and Alaska.
Our History
1978
Bill Lewis, Howard Lease’s grandson, joins the company.
Our History
1993
The company opens a Portland office to serve Oregon and Southwest Washington, building on project work in the region dating back to the 1970s.
Our History
2008
Lewis launches an employee stock ownership plan in 2008. A decade later, we became a 100% employee-owned company.
Our History
2012
Bart Ricketts becomes the fifth CEO of Lewis, and the first to lead the company from outside the founding family.
Our History
2015
Lewis transforms Union Stables into its new headquarters in Seattle, completing a full restoration and seismic retrofit.
Our History
2018
Our education team begins work on the University of Washington’s first integrated design-build project (a form of progressive design-build delivery), marking a pivotal step in Lewis’ growth as a premier design-builder in the Pacific Northwest.
Our History
2021
The Lease Crutcher Lewis Foundation is established to support non-profit partners in creating pathways for women and other historically underrepresented people entering the construction industry.
Data Center Group Launches
2022
Today, Lewis' Data Center & Advanced Technology group has a portfolio of active and completed projects across the Western U.S. and Canada. These efforts represent nearly 250 MW of capacity and more than $1 billion in construction value.
Crutcher Structures Launched
2022
We debut Crutcher Structures, a Lewis subsidiary that delivers structural building frames using concrete, steel, timber or composite materials. The name honors James (Jim) Crutcher, chairman emeritus, who dedicated 50 years of his career to Lewis.
Our Purpose
Lewis empowers our people to improve our communities, turning passion for our craft into buildings that matter.
As committed employee-owners, we are guided by values that shape everything we do. An unwavering commitment to safety with zero incidents on all projects. A focus on delivering project success as defined by our clients. And a tradition of quality backed by more than a century of unsurpassed workmanship. Through it all, we take immense pride in challenges met and expectations exceeded.
Community
Lewis has a long tradition of giving back to our communities. Through service events and corporate giving, we support a variety of nonprofit partners while creating pathways for women and other historically underrepresented groups in construction.
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WE TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER
As a 100-percent employee-owned company, we show up for one another every day, and we actively participate in our teammates’ success.
What makes Lewis a special place to work? At Lewis, our purpose-driven teams build more than projects. We build community, invest in one another's success and ensure that all employees have a voice in shaping what comes next.
Explore Careers(Link opens in new window)Everyone belongs at Lewis
Our workforce drives our success. We celebrate and embrace the differences that make each of us our authentic selves. We believe true diversity stems from diverse representation among our own employees and through our trade-partner relationships.
Our Everyone commitment
We are committed to recognizing and honoring all human differences. Through trust and respect, we create a safe, inclusive workplace where people can be their authentic selves and succeed as part of a high performing team. We lead by example through cultivating a culture where unique perspectives are valued, and innovation thrives.
A more diverse workforce
Through engagement in targeted college, high school and technical school programs, as well as craft referral programs and friends and family days, we’ve expanded our recruiting pipeline and increased the diversity of our salaried staff by 11% and craft employees by 13% since 2021.
Maximizing opportunities
We embrace and support trade partners that are women-owned, minority-owned, LGBTQIA-Owned, veteran-owned and more. We value people, experiences and shared beliefs and we support equity in contracting because we see real value for our clients and our project teams. With proactive relationship building and outreach, we’ve significantly increased our list of prequalified WBE, SBE, MBE, and DBE firms and continue to support their participation on our projects.
Life at Lewis
Stories About Our People
OSU Inducts Lauren Holmes Into the Academy of Distinguished Engineers
ENR Names Dustin Zyph a Top Young Professional in the West
Student, Intern, Employee: How Three Friends Went from Classmates to Coworkers at Lewis
