Construction Industry Veteran Earle Cianchette Named New AZCO CEO

APPLETON, Wisconsin — AZCO, part of the Burns & McDonnell family of companies, has selected Earle Cianchette as the next CEO of the national industrial construction and prefabrication firm. Cianchette succeeds Brett Williams, who has been named president of the Construction/Design-Build Group at Burns & McDonnell.

Cianchette has more than 30 years of construction management experience across multiple industries including power, manufacturing, and oil and gas.

“Every day I get to work for one of the top companies in the nation with some of the most talented professionals,” Cianchette says. “Not everyone can say that. It’s my privilege to continue working with this team to make our clients successful.”

Prior to coming to AZCO in 2020, Cianchette was manager of the Portland, Maine, office of Burns & McDonnell, where he oversaw 50 employee-owners engaged mostly in large program management initiatives. Before joining Burns & McDonnell, Cianchette was senior vice president of operations for a large East Coast-based contractor.

“Earle is the right person at the right time to lead AZCO to greater heights,” says Ray Kowalik, CEO of Burns & McDonnell. “He has years of wide-ranging construction experience and a fantastic team of field construction and prefabrication personnel.”  

In the past year, AZCO has worked on large projects in the natural gas, solar, battery storage, oil and gas, aviation fueling and other industries. Several of those projects were self-performed engineer-procure-construct (EPC) projects with Burns & McDonnell. Those projects include:

• Three Alliant Energy solar projects in the Upper Midwest totaling 250 megawatts.
• A 100-MW/400-MWh battery storage system expansion in California for Vistra. The expansion makes the facility the largest of its kind in the world.
• A fueling system expansion at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport for MKE Fuel Co.

In addition to its construction work, AZCO performs prefabrication for industrial projects from its 83,000-square-foot pipe and metal prefabrication space near its headquarters in Appleton.