Ingram's May 2023

On to the Next Big Thing

Regional construction firms almost across the board had a strong 2022, look ahead to significant project pipelines.

Kansas City has its new front door to the world with the recent opening of a $1.5 billion single-terminal airport, the biggest public-works project in the city’s history. But the regional construction sector’s health extended well beyond the final phases of that transformative project. Among the 25 biggest general contractors in the region, 20 showed year-over-year revenue growth in 2022. That’s up from the 16-9 scorecard for winners in the Top 25 the previous year. Those companies combined for more than $8.8 billion in regional construction projects last year, up from $7.81 billion in 2021. And no, it wasn’t just because of inflation, though there was certainly a healthy element of that at work. Now, attention turns to projects like the $301 million jail being built by Jackson County, the continuing expan sion of the massive Golden Plains data center in the Northland, the $2.5 billion KCI29 Logistics Park, follow-up work on the streetcar expansion from Downtown to the Country Club Plaza, and a number of nine-figure multifamily and mixed-use developments currently going up. Thanks to the monster hiring spree undertaken at Burns & McDonnell as the firm continued to expand its construction services line while bolstering its design staff, the 30 largest contractors pushed regional employ ment in the construction/design-build space

from 7,244 in 2021 to nearly 9,700 last year. That, however, is just a thin slice of the overall labor picture for the region, and doesn’t include hundreds of subcon tractors and small builders. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the broader construction industry in this region employed 41,450 people in 2022, at an average wage of nearly $29 an hour. For one measure of the Kansas City region’s construction-sector vibrancy— even through the pandemic—look no

further than Newkirk Novak Construc tion Partners. Founded in 2017, it went from zero to nine-figure revenues with- in five years, and surged to $178.9 million in 2022 revenues, and a staff of nearly 50. What makes the company’s success noteworthy is that it didn’t stumble into new types of construction work: plenty of other companies were providing the same kinds of services in general contracting, construction management, pre-construc tion and design-build work.

Top 10 Dominance The 10 largest construction companies in the Kansas City region combined for more than 88 percent of the local office billings posted by the 30 largest firms in the market in 2022: Local Office Billings Company (in millions) J.E. Dunn Construction Co. $2,103.76 Burns & McDonnell $1,598.98 Kiewit Corporation $1,900.71 McCownGordon Construction $548.41 Turner Construction Co. $517.00 ARCO National Construction-KC $289.55 Brinkmann Constructors $276.66 Newkirk Novak Construction Partners $178.9 Centric $169.65 Crossland Construction $165.56

Top 10 total: $7.74 billion (88.1 percent) Next 20 largest: $1.05 billion (11.9 percent)

COMING UP | At $301 million, the new Jackson County Jail will be one of the biggest regional construction projects before its planned opening in 2025.

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I ngr am ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

May 2023