Karl Schaefer. President, AEY Inc.
Certified Construction Manager (CCM), DBIA-credentialed design-build professional, LEED Accredited Professional. Licensed General Engineering and Building Contractor across multiple states. More than $5 billion in delivered construction value across commercial, industrial, civic, and infrastructure sectors.
Co-founded AEY Inc. with David Manning in 2020 to combine institutional-grade procurement with field-tested construction expertise.
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A career delivering complex projects.
Karl built his career on the construction side of the industry — managing projects that span structural complexity, demanding schedules, and the unforgiving realities of large-cap commercial and public works delivery. The work spans commercial development, heavy industrial facilities, civic infrastructure, and aviation programs — sectors where the gap between an idea on paper and an asset in the ground requires hundreds of coordinated decisions and unimpeachable execution.
That delivery orientation is what shapes how Karl thinks about material supply. Materials don’t exist in a procurement spreadsheet — they live on a critical-path schedule, in a sequencing plan, and on the receiving end of someone else’s installation crew. Knowing what that looks like from the receiving side changes what kind of supplier AEY needed to be.
$5 billion delivered. Four sectors.
Aviation Infrastructure
Karl currently serves as a construction executive on the Los Angeles World Airports Consolidated Rental Car Facility — one of the largest active aviation programs in Southern California. The role demands coordination across federal, state, and city stakeholders alongside dozens of trade partners on a constrained airport-adjacent site.
Commercial Construction
Office, retail, hospitality, and mixed-use commercial development. The category where schedule pressure, tenant fit-out coordination, and ground-up commercial delivery define successful execution.
Industrial Construction
Manufacturing, warehouse, distribution, and process facilities — projects where clearances, MEP coordination, and equipment integration drive structural design decisions and where supply chain timing on long-lead equipment can move the schedule by months.
Civic & Infrastructure
Public buildings, civic facilities, and infrastructure projects subject to public works standards, prevailing wage, and DVBE/SBE participation requirements. The construction context that informs how AEY structures every public works material supply quote.
Across these sectors, Karl has personally delivered more than $5 billion in construction value.
Two complementary disciplines.
AEY Inc. was co-founded in 2020 by Karl Schaefer and David Manning as equal partners to address a structural gap in California public works construction services: most DVBE-certified firms come from a trade-specialist background, while most general contractors don’t have a single partner that delivers construction management, project management, procurement, and material supply with field-tested construction experience and institutional-grade supply chain operations.
AEY came from the intersection. David brings procurement and supply chain leadership at scale (SpaceX, EssilorLuxottica, Amazon, UPS). Karl brings construction project delivery (CCM, DBIA, LEED AP, multi-state GC licensing, $5B+ portfolio). The combination is what allows AEY to operate as a full construction services partner — construction management, project management, procurement, and material supply — with pricing, lead times, and execution discipline grounded in a real understanding of the conditions on the ground.
Education and professional certifications.
What this background brings to AEY clients.
Karl’s background changes what kind of material supplier AEY can be. Three things show up in every engagement:
Field-tested specification review. When a quote comes in with a substitution proposal or a long-lead alternate, Karl’s construction experience informs whether that recommendation survives sequencing, installation, and inspection in the actual building.
Schedule-aware lead time conversations. AEY doesn’t quote lead times in a vacuum. We quote them in the context of the critical path — and Karl’s delivery experience is what makes that conversation substantive.
Public works fluency. Civic, public buildings, and infrastructure work each have specific procurement requirements, prevailing wage compliance, and participation-goal mechanics. Karl’s career on that side of the industry is what allows AEY to execute cleanly within those frameworks.
Building AEY in partnership.
David Manning
AEY Inc. is a 50/50 partnership between Karl Schaefer and David Manning. David is a United States Marine Corps combat veteran and former global supply chain executive at SpaceX, EssilorLuxottica, Amazon, and UPS. He holds an MBA in Supply Chain Management, the PMP, CSM, and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt credentials, and is a doctoral candidate at UNC Charlotte’s Belk College of Business.
The combination of Karl’s construction project delivery experience with David’s procurement and supply chain operations background is what defines how AEY operates — and what differentiates AEY from construction managers without deep procurement infrastructure.
Connect with AEY Inc.
Email contact@aeyinc.net or estimating@aeyinc.net for quotes. Or reach Karl directly on LinkedIn.