Peter Kiewit -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Updates

The story below features MDU/Knife River. It should be noted that Knife River opened a Western North Dakota Division earlier this year.

Knife River Corporation announced plans today to open a Western North Dakota Division with full aggregate, ready-mix, asphalt and concrete construction services. Headquartered in Williston, division employees will perform private and public work throughout western North Dakota and eastern Montana.

Original Post

Connecting some dots.

I will be posting a bit more on this company when I get a chance. Folks might be interested in reading about Peter Kiewit before I start posting.

For now, I will just mention that I'm noticing a fair number of yellow Peter Kiewit pickup trucks around Williston.

Peter Kiewit home page.

Wiki's page on Kiewit.

Kiewit Corporation, an employee-owned, private company, is a Fortune 500 contractor based in Omaha, Nebraska. It is one of the largest contractors in the world. Recent projects have included several bridge retrofittings in the San Francisco Bay Area, Interstate H-3 project in Hawaii, and building the world's largest geodesic dome at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.The company also has significant mining and off-shore operations, but also contracts small grading (dirt moving) projects for residential or commercial development.

From the Williston Herald, June 25, 2011, which I linked on that date:

Terry Metzler, North Dakota operations manager for Granite Peak Development, said Phase I of the project will fill 120 acres of the 289.5-acre, three-phase project.

"It will have 800-1,400 multi-family housing and apartment units and 155 single-family homes," Metzler said.

Located on the corner of 26th Street West and 35th Avenue West, the final two phases will bring the final number of housing units to 2,295. In addition, commercial space for restaurants, a gas station, convenience store and office space will be provided as well as 40 acres for a new school and acreage for a park.

One-half mile by one mile rectangle = 320 acresWith roads in, perhaps a minimum of 1,200 lots at 100' x 80'Those would be large single-home lotsMore likely 75' x 50'

"Four weeks" ago this area was still a farmfield. "Four weeks" later the topsoil has been removed, the lots staked, roads put in (hard dirt roads, not asphalt yet); water, sewer and electrical are put in (at least from what I can tell). All of this in less than two months.

For a PDF file on this new subdivision, click here.

“Kiewit Infrastructure Group will be doing the earthwork, Knife River will be doing all of the infrastructure such as water, sewer, streets and sidewalks, and Sanderson-Stewart is our engineering and design firm”, says Metzler. “I suspect Williston will see construction like they haven’t seen since the levees were built in the 1950’s”, says Metzler.

Someone needs to take an aerial photograph of this activity.