K-STATE GRAD WORKS ON
NEW LEGOLAND THEME PARK ATTRACTION BY ASHLEY PAULS LEGOLAND PHOTO COURTESY OF LEGOLAND PRESS ROOM PROFILE PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS JADWIN ’02
When he was young, Chris Jadwin ’02 remembers asking for the same thing every year at Christmas: a set of Construx plastic building toys from Fisher-Price. “I liked building stuff when I was little,” he said. As it turns out, Jadwin still likes “building stuff ” — as a project executive for commercial construction company Swinerton, he now oversees a growing portfolio of building projects covering a variety of industries, including healthcare, office
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buildings, higher education, entertainment and, more recently, amusement parks. In October 2018, Swinerton began working on a project for Legoland California, an amusement park based on the widely popular toy brand known for its colorful plastic interlocking bricks — a true dream come true for a kid who grew up dreaming of building his own creations. Jadwin grew up in Hiawatha, Kansas, and graduated from Kansas State University in
2002 with a degree in construction science and management. He spent more than a decade with general contracting firm Rudolph and Sletten Inc. before transferring to Swinerton in 2013. He typically works on 3-5 active design/construction projects at any one time, assembling teams and managing schedules, budgets and other details. Jadwin said Swinerton was approached by Merlin Entertainments — a U.K. company owning
