Langman
Construction, Inc.
counts on a large
fleet of Komatsu
equipment from
RMS, including this
PC400LC-6 hydraulic
excavator.
Langman crews tackle projects in the firm's hometown of Rock Island, in surrounding Mercer County in Illinois and in the other four Quint Cities - East Moline, Moline, Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa.
"We prefer to do most of our work around here so the guys can stay home," said Langman. "We get maybe a couple of jobs a year an hour or an hour and a half away. Iowa City and the Burlington area have been good to us. We probably do more work in Dubuque than any other area outside of town. We've worked in Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, Marshalltown and a lot of smaller communities in Iowa."
Assisting Langman in running his company are Vice President/Secretary John Lester and Controller Mark Evans. Another key employee, Field Coordinator John Bromley, "was one of our first or second employees," added Langman. "He died a little over a year ago of cancer. John was such a talented person. He graduated from Rock Island's building trades program and came in as an 18-year-old. John ran all our field operations successfully for a long time. There's a lot of people who think a lot of him."
Kyle Kennelly is Langman's concrete and dirt superintendent "who also bids and estimates," added Langman. "Underground Superintendent Warren Johnson runs the sewer and water. Pat Skrome is our new field coordinator in Illinois. He took over for John."
Langman noted that he employs many excellent superintendents in the field, including "the three Stutzel guys, Tom, Steve and Danny, two brothers and a son, and Roy Pritchett, who always run our toughest sewer jobs," he smiled. "And we have operators and pipelayers who have been with us forever. We also have a very good office staff that has been together for years."
Knoxville operation
Langman Construction, Inc. also has an operation in Knoxville, Iowa, under the supervision of Jan Stanley, who runs the office, and Chuck Force, who works in the field. The Knoxville branch was established in the late 1980s to tackle projects in central Iowa.
"We were wanting to expand and we were working in Iowa anyway," Langman recalled. "We were having difficulty getting people to leave their homes and spend the work week in a hotel. In order to keep that market, one of our fellows, Jan Stanley, was willing to settle there.
"It was rough in the beginning until we got settled in," he continued. "Now it's like anything else, some years are better than others, but it's mostly been good. We work in the smaller communities just outside of Des Moines. The city itself has been a tough market for us."
Railroad relocation
Langman Construction crews have tackled a wide variety of difficult jobs over the years, but the most challenging was a railroad relocation project in Dubuque for the Iowa Department of Transportation in the mid-1980s.
"What we were doing was removing rail and replacing it in locations that didn't conflict with Highway 61 in downtown Dubuque," Langman explained. "We were trying to make access through Dubuque easier. The railroads were assigned to our contract, and we were directly responsible for the scheduling, construction and completion of the $18 million project."