The company's origin dates back to a rainy evening in 1961 when Neil T. Coakley & Fred G. Williams met in a parking lot on Brookeville Road in Silver Spring for the first time. Neil owned and ran a successful plastering business founded by his father, a native of Ireland. Fred was a Cornell mechanical engineering grad who owned a small business building custom homes. Each was looking for a warehouse to house his expanding business. Their secretaries were friends and suggested to their respective bosses that they meet since they had this need for more space in common.

Fred and Neil remained in their cars due to the heavy rain but pulled up side by side. After a brief discussion, they sealed a partnership with a simple handshake through car windows. Their new joint undertaking as real estate developers was born, and its first project was their warehouse which they would build and share. They ran their respective plastering and home-building businesses out of their completed warehouse and immediately began planning and executing further development projects. After a time, their materials and employees became hopelessly commingled, and they wound down their original businesses and became full-time developers as Coakley & Williams Inc.

Throughout the sixties, they acquired land using Fred's helicopter to scout available parcels along the new Capital Beltway. They developed and built these acquisitions into hotels, office buildings, and warehouse space. By the early seventies, they were full-service developers with in-house hotel management, property management, leasing, and construction divisions. They continued to manage their real estate portfolios until their retirements in the early nineties.

 Focus on Construction

Meanwhile, Pat Caulfield and Terry Coakley, two executives at the company, changed the course of the future when, in 1985, they started up a third-party general contracting operation by incorporating and purchasing the Construction Division of Coakley & Williams. The resultant firm, Coakley & Williams Construction, Inc., targeted complex design-build projects for public and private sector clients while balancing its business with negotiated traditional delivery projects in the commercial, institutional, and commercial sectors.

Under their leadership, the company grew from modest construction revenues of $3 million in 1985 to become a perennial ENR Top 400 within eight years. The company grew steadily, building projects in twenty states throughout the US while also cementing itself as a highly respected brand locally, with a diverse portfolio and blue-chip repeat clients.

The Next Generation of Leaders

After 35 years of operating as a two-person partnership, Pat & Terry admitted six company leaders in 2018 as equity partners in a new company perpetuating transition plan. Seven additional CWC leaders have joined the Partnership since 2020, continuing a powerful legacy that began more than 60 years ago.