Chairman retires after leading Fort Myers contractor to nearly $250M in revenue

Gary Griffin, chairman and longtime executive of Fort Myers-based B&I Contractors, which has some 1,200 employees and had nearly $250 million in revenue last year, has announced his retirement. 

Griffin’s last day with the company, which specializes in mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, will be Oct. 31, according to a statement. 

Griffin joined the company as an intern while a University of Florida student, then got hired on full time in 1986. By 1995, when he was 32, he was named CEO. In a 2021 interview with the Business Observer, Griffin recalled that the co-founder of the company, Gordon Harbuck, and the next CEO, Hugh Clark, were influential mentors and helped groom him to take on the CEO role. “They made sure I got a lot of training and was well prepared to take over,” he says. “I probably wasn’t ‘ready,’ but I was more ready than I would have been had it not been for them taking a personal interest in getting me ready.”