Kiewit Corporation

Who owns Kiewit?
Kiewit's employees own the company. It has been employee-owned since founder Peter Kiewit began selling shares to workers decades ago, and no outside investors or family members hold control.

Is Kiewit publicly traded?
No. Kiewit Corporation is private and employee-owned, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States by revenue.

When was Kiewit founded?
Brothers Peter and Andrew Kiewit founded the company in Omaha, Nebraska in 1884 as a masonry contractor.

What is Kiewit's connection to Warren Buffett?
Longtime CEO Walter Scott Jr. was a close friend of Buffett, a major Berkshire Hathaway shareholder, and a Berkshire board member. The association shaped Kiewit's reputation for disciplined capital allocation.

What major projects has Kiewit built?
Notable work includes Thule Air Base in Greenland, the Fort McHenry Tunnel, T-Mobile Park, the Oroville Dam spillway rebuild, the Klamath River dam removals, and the Francis Scott Key Bridge reconstruction.

Brothers Peter and Andrew Kiewit founded Kiewit Brothers in Omaha in 1884 as a small masonry contractor. Peter took sole control in the early twentieth century and steered the company from brick buildings into heavy civil work. By the 1920s the firm had built some of Nebraska's most recognizable structures, including the Livestock Exchange Building, the Nebraska State Capitol Tower, the Joslyn Art Museum, and Omaha's Union Station.

The mid-century decades established Kiewit as a national contractor. Between 1951 and 1966 the company built Thule Air Base for the US military in Greenland, one of the most remote major construction projects ever undertaken. In 1969 it began work on New York's 63rd Street Tunnel, and in the early 1980s it completed the mile-long Fort McHenry Tunnel under Baltimore Harbor.

Two developments shaped the modern company. First, employee ownership: Peter Kiewit began selling shares to employees decades before ESOPs were fashionable, and by his death in 1979 the company was effectively worker-owned. Second, Walter Scott Jr., who became CEO in 1979, expanded aggressively and cultivated a close friendship with Warren Buffett; Scott became one of Berkshire Hathaway's largest individual shareholders and a board member, and Kiewit became known in the industry as the construction firm run on Buffett-like principles of discipline.

Kiewit also spawned one of the great spin-offs in telecom history. Its diversified arm created Level 3 Communications in 1998, taking the fiber network business public as a separate company. Rick Lanoha, a career Kiewit executive, now serves as President and CEO.

Signature recent projects include the emergency reconstruction of the Oroville Dam spillway in California, the largest dam removal in US history on the Klamath River, Phase II of the Washington Metro Silver Line, and the rebuild of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge following the 2024 collapse. Revenue grew from $16.8 billion in 2024 to $18.2 billion in 2025.

Kiewit publishes an annual sustainability report anchored by its safety program, whose internal motto is "Nobody Gets Hurt." As an employee-owned firm it emphasizes long-horizon stewardship over quarterly metrics, and it has invested in lower-emission equipment and construction methods. The company's scale means most of its footprint sits in client projects rather than owned operations.

• Fortune 500: Ranked approximately 247th among the largest US corporations in 2025
• ENR rankings: Consistently placed among the top five contractors in Engineering News-Record's Top 400

Heavy construction carries inherent OSHA and environmental exposure, and Kiewit records routine safety citations typical for a company employing tens of thousands of craft workers. No company-defining regulatory action or major public scandal is on record as of November 2026.