Just the other day, the president of Weitz Iowa approved a construction project priced at $2,100.

That might have sounded like a good-sized contract to the company founder, Charles H. Weitz, but we’ve experienced a century and a half of inflation since he arrived in Des Moines in 1855 and got a job installing windows in a downtown building.

What that wall-building assignment really represented to President Mike Tousley was one more step in the never-ending process of finding work. “We have found that the magic of repeat business is very important,” Tousley said. “You never know what might blossom down the road.”

That strategy has paid off so far. The Weitz Co. celebrates its 150th anniversary as a company with 13 business-unit offices, including Weitz Iowa, spread across the United States. In 2004, revenues surpassed $1 billion for the first time – four times the 1994 total — and are projected to grow by $100 million this year. The 2004 revenue figure placed Weitz 41st on the McGraw-Hill Construction list of the nation’s top 400 contractors. Weitz Iowa had revenues of $170 million in 2004.

The Iowa business unit has 76 salaried employees; about 220 hourly employees are working now in Greater Des Moines. Since 1999, Weitz Iowa has had its headquarters at 5901 Thornton Ave., an out-of-the-way spot on the South Side with a dramatic view of the downtown skyline.

The company has been reshaped dramatically in the past 10 years after a fundamental course change in 1995. That’s when Fred Weitz, representing the fourth generation of his family’s ownership, sold the company to 36 employees led by Glenn DeStigter.

“Now 247 employees are in the ownership program,” Tousley said. That number represents 84 percent of those eligible. Employees must be with Weitz for three years before becoming eligible to participate, and not all positions qualify. Once they buy ownership stakes in the company, they have the right to vote in the election of board of management members. Although Weitz is privately held, it follows the standards of publicly held companies and includes people from outside the company on the board.

“It’s a powerful message when we go to make a proposal to a client, and we can say that everybody we brought to the meeting has a stake in the project,” Tousley said.

Since that program’s inception, the company has expanded beyond its core construction work by creating these specialized niche units: Hy-Vee Weitz Construction in 1995; Capital Resources Group in 1996; Weitz Golf International in 1998; Weitz Norris Custom Homes in 2001; A+ Communications in 2001; RW Metals in 2002; Data Builder Inc. in 2003; Weitz Agricultural in 2004; and Weitz Industrial this year.

Other business units are located in Florida, Kansas City, Colorado and Arizona.

Weitz implemented a five-year business plan in 1999, which it labeled the 2004 Plan. “A five-year plan forces you to think further out,” Tousley said. However, because of the company’s rapid pace of growth, “halfway through, enough had changed so that we started a new five-year plan, the 2007 plan. But we may well have another planning session this year and come up with a 2010 plan.”

Each Weitz unit is relatively autonomous, Tousley said. At Weitz Iowa, for example, “we have our own accounting and marketing departments; we make our own decisions on the projects we chase,” he said. The parent company handles some functions for all of the divisions, such as human resources, safety, legal, high-level financial tasks and insurance. “We all rely on the overall financial strength of the company,” Tousley said. “We all recognize the need for each other to be successful so the surety company is happy and provides bonds.”

Weitz Iowa has decided to specialize in projects at small colleges and in the construction of health-care facilities, such as clinics, hospitals and nursing homes.

“We continually call on private colleges,” Tousley said. “Iowa has lots of good, financially strong colleges.” Recent projects have included the Estelle Siebens Science Center at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake; a gymnasium at Grinnell College to replace the one built by Weitz in 1942; and, on a larger campus, the Bergstrom Indoor Practice Facility at Iowa State University in Ames.

As for the health-care sector, Tousley said, “our market data looks out five years, and one segment that continues to grow is medical.”

The unusual partnership with Hy-Vee Inc. “has been very good for us,” Tousley said. Work on new grocery stores owned or operated by Hy-Vee produced about $68 million in revenues in 2004, leading Weitz to wonder about other likely partners. “I think that model certainly could be pursued,” Tousley said.

Nationally, the construction industry has shown strength in recent months. According to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the value of construction put in place in the first quarter of 2005 set a 13th consecutive record of $1.407 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, and employment increased 3.6 percent during the past 12 months to a record 7.15 million.

“Growth has been fairly slow in the non-residential sector nationally, but our company growth has far exceeded that,” Tousley said. He predicted a “fairly busy” construction market in the state for the foreseeable future. In Central Iowa, the prospects remain bright.

“Des Moines seems to not follow the national economy,” he said. “We have a number of good, solid insurance and financial institutions that are continually growing. And whenever that was slow, we had public projects.”

The dimensions of the market work in Weitz’s favor, too. Greater Des Moines is “small enough that it doesn’t attract other construction companies,” Tousley said. “But that’s starting to change; we’re starting to see competitors come in.”

Weitz is working on several major projects locally, including the new downtown public library, the Iowa Events Center and the upcoming Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino expansion, a major undertaking that should last about 18 months.

Tousley said, “I fight daily the perception that we only do large projects.” Seventy percent of Weitz Iowa’s projects are less than $2 million in value.

Still, there’s the hope that small jobs will lead to big ones. “We did a restroom remodel for Color Converting (Industries Co.),” Tousley said, “and when it came time for them to build a new facility, they called us.”