Lonnie Morelock

Lonnie Morelock grew up in the construction industry and took his first ride on a Cat 651 Scraper with his dad when he was five years old. He has been hooked on heavy construction ever since.

In 1980, at 18 years old, right out of high school, Lonnie joined the Operating Engineers Local Union #3 while working the Warm Springs Dam Project (now Lake Sonoma) in Healdsburg, California. For the next 20 years, he honed his skills as a heavy equipment operator, working on a plethora of civil grading projects for multiple companies throughout Northern California and Alaska.

In 1992, Lonnie took a job as a grade setter with Kiewit Pacific Company in Brisbane, California. Through his strong work ethic and civil grading knowledge, Lonnie was soon promoted to grading foreman, supervising mass grading crews for Kiewit on large-scale civil grading projects. In 1996, Lonnie was promoted to general excavation foreman on the Los Vaqueros Earth Fill Dam Project in Brentwood, California. In 2000, Kiewit offered Lonnie a salaried superintendent position, which he accepted with unbridled enthusiasm and never looked back.

Lonnie quickly rose through the ranks, managing large, heavy civil projects throughout Northern California. In 2008, Kiewit promoted him to project manager on Phase 1 of the Folsom Dam Auxiliary Spillway Flood Control Project for the Bureau of Reclamation. This project was very successful, awarding Kiewit the Bureau of Reclamation’s “Construction Safety Award for 2008.” Lonnie was also nominated for the coveted “Peter Kiewit–Excellence in Management Award” for his team’s efforts.

In the fall of 2010, Kiewit sent Lonnie to his first mega-project assignment, taking over the reins as operations manager on Segment 4 of the Port Mann Highway 1 Project in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was on this job that Lonnie continued to develop his motivational communication, training field leaders to become supervisors and honing team building skills. Lonnie went on to develop and improve his training methods and build high-performing construction teams throughout the Western United States.

In 2018, Lonnie ended his successful Kiewit career as site logistical operations manager on the Oroville Dam Emergency Spillway Project in Northern California.

Early on in his construction career, Lonnie began developing his leadership training skills, focusing on productivity, continuous improvement, and his passion for building high-performance teams. As he began working with individuals under his immediate supervision, he soon came to realize that nurturing supervisors into field leaders was his true calling.

Lonnie’s retirement from Kiewit allowed him to follow his passion, and he started Morelock Motivational, Inc., focusing on field leadership development, team building, and team performance. He now works with clients, specifically mentoring and training field-based and management-level supervisors to become the best leaders they can be, as well as training and inspiring their teams to reach new levels of high performance and overall success.

Lonnie and his wife, Michelle, reside in Rocklin, California, with their four dogs, Bodie, Red, Gracie, and Lu Lu.