"The best are the ones built without controversy, when the owner, the architect, and the builder work together," Clark says. He sees construction as a service business and Clark Construction as a company built on people, not blueprints or bricks.

It is a lesson he learned from his mentor, Benjamin Rome, who learned it from his mentor, George Hyman, founder of the company that was to become Clark Enterprises.

"Ben Rome was a perfectionist," Clark recalls. "He checked every letter that went out to make sure the English was correct."

Rome hired Clark out of the University of Maryland College of Engineering. Clark started at $60 a week in 1950 as a layout man on a construction site. Three years later, Rome brought him into the office as a manger – but Clark still began every morning in the field checking on construction jobs.

By 1960, Clark was general manager of the company. These were growth years for Hyman Construction. The University of Maryland was on the move, and Hyman did much of the building. The company also began working with commercial developers and got the contract to build the first phase of L'Enfant Plaza. At the time it was one of the biggest private projects built here.

In 1969, Clark bought the company and began to expand beyond the capital area. "We had a big percentage of the Washington work," he says. "We expanded primarily for our people – if you don't offer more opportunities, you don't keep good people."

The company took flight with its first out-of-town job: Clark built Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta.

Clark Enterprises is now a $2-billion-a-year company with more than 4,000 employees and six offices across the country.

Jim Clark has not forgotten his roots. The school of engineering at the University of Maryland bears his name, and he serves on the board of trustees of the College Park foundation.

Clark is proud that his company is rebuilding one of the first Washington structures he ever worked on: the American Red Cross. "We saved the façade," he says proudly.

Preserving the good, making it better, just the way the customer wants it – that's the way Jim Clark built a great company.