The Master Builder

Peter Kiewit is a 51-year-old Omaha contractor whose motto is: "No job is too big or too small." Three years ago, while grossing more than $100 million a year. Kiewit lived up to half of his motto. He won a contract to resurface three rural Nebraska streets. Cost: $1,500. Last week, Kiewit lived up to the other half. He got the second biggest single construction contract ever awarded.* Kiewit's new job: the $1.2 billion uranium plant for the Atomic Energy Commission in southern Ohio (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

The new AEC plant, spread over 6,500 acres, will take four years to build, employ an average of 17,000 men for the whole period. That means that Peter Kiewit Sons' Co. will boss nearly $1,000,000 worth of work per day. For the next four years, at least, Peter Kiewit is likely to be the world's No. i builder.

Out of Bed. Contractor Kiewit (pronounced key-wit), whose builder father left a small company with $25,000 in assets to three sons, has been moving mountains of earth since he took over the company in 1931. He got up from a hospital bed to do so. Young Kiewit, who learned bricklaying in high-school days and quit Dartmouth as a freshman to become a builder, had been stricken by phlebitis followed by serious complications. After lying on his back in a hospital for nine months, he decided: "If I'm going to die. I might as well die working."

In that brave mood, Kiewit decided to whip Depression as well, began expanding while other contractors were pulling in their horns (his Brothers dropped out of the company). Shrewdly, he figured that public works would get a big play as a relief measure, and when the big New Deal projects came along he had the experience and the equipment to go after them. He landed $3,000,000 worth of contracts building PWA-financed irrigation canals in Nebraska, often got jobs by bidding for them at cost, figuring that prices would drop enough afterward for him to make a profit (they did). By 1938, he was big enough to handle more than $6,000,000 in contracts to help build Chicago's new subway. When World War II came, says Kiewit, "We really began to roll."

In five World War II years, Kiewit bossed or shared more than $300 million of Government contracts, ranging from Army camps in Washington, Colorado and Oregon to landing fields along the Alcan Highway. At war's end, when crapehang-ers were again crying Depression, Kiewit made his second decision to expand, since then has bought an armored division of modern equipment. His 1,000 trucks, 350 tractors and 80 power shovels, etc., have a replacement value of $20 million. He kept a big staff of specialists and workers, including more than 100 engineers under Vice President and Right-Hand-Man Walter Scott; unlike many others he did not pare down to skeleton size between jobs. Result: he got many new ones because he was the only man fully equipped to take them on. He helped build highways in California and Kansas and the big dams through the Missouri Valley. His firm's working capital grew to more than $20 million, his payroll to 34,218, his business last year rose to $150 million (and this year it will easily top $200 million).

Kiewit himself is several times a millionaire. He hops from job to job in his personal DC-3, equipped with extra gas tanks for transocean flights. Kiewit is so busy that recently, when his pilot asked permission to paint the plane's nose, he refused because it would take 48 hours to dry. And the onetime invalid is now so hale that insurance companies long since canceled the penalty rates they used to charge him.

Into the Mud. A quiet, grey-thatched man who looks more like a banker than an earth mover, Kiewit nevertheless knows how to slog into the mud, show his men what to do, get the most out of them. If he likes a job, he says: "I'm pleased but not satisfied." He has an unpretentious office on the tenth floor of the Omaha National Bank building, maintains twelve others from coast to coast, but is stubbornly publicity-shy. "We've done pretty well without it," he says laconically. He seldom takes a vacation, but sometimes, with his second wife, weekends at the $1,000,000 Nebraska ranch he bought three years ago. Now & then he takes over a Missouri River barge to provide a cruise, dance, drinks and a steak dinner for several score of his friends.

Two years ago, when Army Engineers asked Kiewit to take on one of its biggest projects to date--"Operation Bluejay," a $100-million-plus contract to build heavy-bomber airfields on Greenland and housing for 4,000 men--Kiewit turned down the hurry-up job. When the Engineers could get no one else to take it on, Kiewit finally agreed to tackle it. He formed a combine of his own choosing, headed up three other firms to do the job. The project is now well under way.

When AEC drew up its list of prospective builders recently for the Ohio atom plant, Kiewit's name was one of a dozen or more recommended. But in weeding the list down, the AEC decided that ever-ready Kiewit was the only one with enough equipment and men at the ready to tackle the job immediately. Earth-Mover Kiewit was pleased, but not satisfied, when he won the second biggest contract in history.

* Biggest: Du Font's $1.420 billion job to build the Savannah River H-Bomb plant.

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