In 1929, two unemployed carpenters – Russell Burnup and Riley Sims – envisioned creating a construction company that would serve the growing telecommunications and civil construction market in Florida and, eventually, the Southeast. With a handshake and their mutual trust, they formed their firm. They called it Burnup & Sims, letting their names and reputations represent the company.

From those humble beginnings in the depths of the Great Depression, Burnup & Sims grew into a construction powerhouse. The company built telephone networks throughout the nation, as well as in the Middle East and the Pacific Islands, laid the first underwater telephone cable from Florida to Puerto Rico, and built nearly one-fourth of the country’s cable television systems.

In 1969, Church & Tower, an underground utility construction firm, recruited Cuban immigrant Jorge Mas Canosa to bring discipline, focus and leadership to the company. Hardworking and driven by the fundamental belief that a person could succeed by capitalizing on opportunities, Mas Canosa foresaw Church & Tower’s place in South Florida’s impending economic growth as filling a need for reliable telecommunications infrastructure. Mas Canosa forged a relationship with a regional telephone company by demonstrating Church & Tower’s cost-effective and expedient construction techniques. The telephone company awarded Church & Tower a long-term contract to install and repair underground phone lines throughout greater Miami and Fort Lauderdale. In 1971, Mas Canosa bought Church & Tower.

Jorge Mas Canosa had a strong sense of family and encouraged his three sons’ involvement in Church & Tower. Under Mas Canosa’s tutelage, his sons learned the business so well that he turned the company over to his eldest son, Jorge Mas, with his two other sons also holding vital roles in the business. With this new, younger leadership, Church & Tower achieved unprecedented growth. Customers embraced the firm’s innovative methods and began looking to them for service and guidance beyond the company’s traditional geographic reach.

Church & Tower’s leadership realized that to serve national telecommunications giants that would emerge from the industry’s deregulation, the company needed to grow. The Mas family saw South Florida-based Burnup & Sims as a major player in many markets, but also as a company struggling to define its culture and vision for the future. Under Jorge Mas’ guidance, the two companies became one. On March 11, 1994, publicly traded Burnup & Sims acquired Church & Tower. Jorge Mas became the company’s president and his father chairman, and the name was changed to MasTec.

Over the next decade, MasTec acquired companies that fit with its core expertise – underground and aerial infrastructure development. By folding companies under the MasTec name and hiring personnel with specialized expertise, MasTec broadened its capabilities and geographic reach to serve the utility companies and communications businesses, and the federal government with underground and aerial construction, design and engineering, and equipment installation services.