Navigating 'Organized Chaos': Philly Vets Say Former Military Are Naturals For Construction Industry

This past Veteran’s Day weekend, Ted Baumgardner brought two eras of his life together.

The South Jersey-based former Marine Corps officer who created artificial intelligence-powered construction software company BidAssist attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Tun Tavern on Saturday. It also happened to be the 249th anniversary of the Marines.

The Tun Tavern in Old City is where the U.S. Marines were founded during the Revolutionary War in 1775. The building, originally situated under Interstate 95, burned down a few years later, but a nonprofit is building a replica of the historic bar just 250 yards away. The replica is expected to be complete in November 2025, just in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary the following year. 

For Baumgardner, the event marries his eight years of service to his career in construction. It's a path being traced by an increasing number of former active military, both in Philadelphia and nationally, and it's one employers say uniquely aligns with many veterans' skill sets.

Construction requires “crazy human feats of collaboration,” Baumgardner said. “We’re able to come together and build these incredible structures.”

Some 12.7% of all U.S. veterans end up working in the construction, natural resources and maintenance fields, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Just 8.7% of the non-veteran population is represented in those segments of the economy.

Paul Guelich, a former National Guard officer who’s now a senior project manager at Skanska’s office in Blue Bell, told Bisnow “organized chaos” is a fact of life for both construction workers and active-duty military personnel.

He and Baumgardner recalled the same piece of tactical advice that’s considered dogma in the U.S. military: “No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.”

The two Philly-area vets-turned-construction-professionals believe it also applies to an industry in which site conditions often require workers to change course at a moment’s notice.

“There’s just such a common emphasis on teams and accomplishing the mission,” Baumgardner said. “Each project is different, just like each mission is different.”

Guelich and Baumgardner see parallels between the military’s rigid administrative structure and the hierarchy that guides the construction industry.

Project managers are similar to the commanding officers since both positions are focused on the big picture, they said. Superintendents are similar to non-commissioned officers, who technically rank lower but have the practical experience needed to guide operations on the ground. Laborers are akin to soldiers, who carry out orders from their superiors.

Skanska has implemented policies to hire vets and prioritize vet-owned subcontractors. In an industry where 94% of firms are failing to find enough qualified workers, it's a model that could have legs.

“Knowing that person who owns that business served in the military means they generally have all those good experiences I mentioned,” Guelich said.

Guelich spent eight years in the New Jersey Army National Guard. The organization’s tuition waiver for in-state public colleges helped pay for the degrees Guelich received at Rutgers University-Camden, near his hometown of Mount Laurel.

“I was actually at a net-positive cash flow when I was in school,” he said.

Guelich was commissioned as a second lieutenant around the time of the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. He went on active duty in 2003 amid the global war on terrorism and was deployed to South Jersey’s Fort Dix, where he led a 44-member military police unit. The vet’s sister unit was deployed to Iraq, which is why he believes he narrowly missed a stint in the Middle East.

After completing his full-time service, Guelich remained in the reserves part-time while getting his construction career underway. He left the National Guard in 2007 as he prepared to start a family.

September 2001 was also an inflection point for Baumgarnder, who was a fifth-grader in Longport when 9/11 rocked the U.S. The attacks made him feel obligated to become part of the nation’s response.

Baumgarder enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 2009, which ended up being free since he spent more than eight years in the Marine Corps.

His service included a seven-month boat tour with stops in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. By 2015, Baumgardner was an intelligence officer, who used cutting-edge technology to fight terrorist groups like ISIS.

The veteran decided it was time to leave the Marines in 2021, and he used the Department of Defense’s SkillBridge program to spend the last few months of his service completing an internship. Baumgardner’s family has deep roots in the South Jersey construction industry, so he interned at his mother’s company, Guthrie Glass & Mirror.

He spent three years working as a glazing estimator while completing a dual law-MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania. The G.I. bill covered nearly the entire cost of the degree.

While working at the family company, Baumgardner came up with the idea for BidAssist, an AI-powered program that helps construction firms efficiently analyze requests for proposals.

The amount of RFP information companies receive from potential clients has ballooned in recent years, he said, and many skilled tradespeople are not equipped to handle this kind of complex administrative work.

“Our clients were sending us a ton of info and we were struggling to keep up,” Baumgardner said. “It’s challenging because of the volume of information. The complexity has increased and the tools to handle that complexity haven’t… Folks are losing their effectiveness because they’re spinning their wheels trying to wade through the muck.”

BidAssist extracts key information from documents and provides a synthesized summary, which is similar to the work Baumgardner did as an intelligence officer. The experience he had with cutting-edge military technology also fostered the coding skills Baumgardner used to craft BidAssist. 

The military has helped many veterans launch successful careers in the private sector, but Guelich said it’s not always so easy for veterans to transition into a civilian career. While there are some parallels between the construction industry and the military, there are key differences as well.

Many soldiers are accustomed to spending months at a time with their co-workers in intense life-and-death situations, so the personal boundaries that govern civilian professional life can be confusing for them at first. The military is also generally defined by direct orders and specific objectives. It can be challenging for vets to step into a business environment where the goals are more amorphous and workers are sometimes left to their own devices.

These struggles are part of the reason veterans were included in Skanska’s longstanding diversity program. The company’s U.S. Building Operations team employs 160 veterans, including four in the metro Philadelphia office. 

Skanska also prioritizes veteran-owned companies for subcontracting work. While constructing a life sciences building in Horsham, Guelich and Skanska contracted $3.8M of sheet metal work from the veteran-owned William Donovan Co. 

Guelich stressed that not all veterans had positive military experiences like him and Baumgardner. Remembering those sacrifices is an important part of Veterans Day, he added.

“I am one of the very fortunate ones,” Guelich said. “I feel like I got more out of the military service than I gave… So many people gave or sacrificed way more than what the military ever could give back to them.”