CUSTOMER| A SALUTE TO AN CUSTOMER |
VALLEY CONSTRUCTION CO., INC.
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Started 82 years ago in Rock Island, Ill., by Arthur J. Hass, the company today is still run by Hass family members. The management team includes second-generation members John Hass, Jim Hass, and Bill Hass, as well as Greg Hass and Michael Hass, members of the third generation. Greg handles some of the day-to-day operations and oversees field operations and equipment as well as purchasing. Michael Hass is the industrial division manager. “We’re a heavy highway contractor that does highway asphalt and concrete paving, underground utilities, earthmoving, excavation and commercial and industrial site work,” said Greg Hass, who has been with Valley Construction for about 10 years. His grandfather started the business in his teens, said Hass, and gradually built the company up from small alley and sidewalk jobs to the major contracting work it does today. Generally, half of the company’s work is for private customers, the other half is public work. During the busy season, from 200 to 250 employees work on projects that are all within Valley Construction is
expanding the Rock River
Beltway in Milan, Ill.,
from two to four lanes,
which includes new
interchanges and the
realignment of
Airport Road |
about 100 miles of the Quad Cities. “We actively have probably 20 large to medium-size projects going on at any one time,” said Hass. “We’ll have a city street here, a county asphalt job there, or a new housing area. Twenty or 30 crews every day are working on different jobs in different areas.” According to Hass, crews are also usually working on four or five new subdivisions in the area, contracted to do the earthwork, the paving or the underground utilities. “In some cases we’re partners with the developers, and with some we’re just hired to do the work,” he said. Rock River project A project crews started working on late last fall is called the Rock River Beltway project. “It is one of our biggest jobs ever,” Hass pointed out. “It is all new construction and amounts to building a couple of bridges over a couple of Interstates, probably 400,000 to 500,000 yards of dirt and a lot of concrete paving. It is a whole new corridor that will cross the Rock River and go from Milan, Illinois, into Moline.” The two-year project initially involved a fairly substantial amount of wetlands mitigation, according to Hass. Valley Construction crews won the contract to complete all the work on the south side of the river, paving right up to the Rock River bridge. The work on the north side of the bridge will be let in the spring. Other recent projects included constructing the weigh-in-motion scale system on I-280 eastbound and westbound; building the outdoor concrete storage bunkers for spent nuclear rods at the Cordova nuclear generating station in Cordova as well as a similar one in Palo, Iowa; the demolition of Duck Creek Mall in Bettendorf, Iowa; and the rebuilding of Locust Street in Davenport, Iowa. |
One of the most well-recognized and honored
names in the highway construction business in the
Quad Cities area is Valley Construction Co., Inc.
