In 1902 Budd joined the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad for the construction of its St. Louis-Kansas City line. It was on the Rock that Budd met one of the deans of American railroad civil engineering, John Frank Stevens. Stevens' was already well known for his location of the Great Northern Railway's line across Montana's Marias Pass, and would soon go on to plan the Panama Canal at the behest of Theodore Roosevelt. Budd followed Stevens to Panama, working on the engineering of the Panama Railway.