Omaha’s Boyd Jones, which turned 100 years old in 2024, traces its construction history to a young St. Louis native who arrived in Omaha in 1917. Today, from its Omaha headquarters in the historic Rail & Commerce Building at 10th and Mason Streets—rescued after decades of disuse—Boyd Jones combines the legacies of three families.
Walter Boyd Jones founded the company in 1924 and led it through the Great Depression, World War II, and Omaha’s post-war growth.
His successor was Louis Pruch, a South Omaha boy who began as a draftsman and estimator. He headed the business until 1980 when he turned over leadership to his son-in-law, Robert T. Owen.
Then came the Cranes: Roger, who joined as a partner in 1984 and bought the business outright five years later, and Jon, who bought out his father in 2007. Today, Roger watches contentedly from the sidelines.
Boyd Jones’ work is familiar to many in the Omaha area. Projects include the Omaha Community Playhouse, multiple buildings at Offutt Air Force Base, the Sutherland Power Plant near North Platte, Fontenelle Forest Nature Center, JPII Newman Center at UNO, St. Wenceslaus Church, several projects for Baxter Auto Group, including Lexus and Audi of Omaha, Airlite Plastics’ manufacturing plant, and hundreds more.
W. Boyd Jones’ relationship with St. Louis’s Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch beer fame) indirectly led him to Omaha. After working on the Busch offices in St. Louis, the brewer sent him to Dallas to oversee the construction of the 22-story Adolphus Hotel, named after cofounder Adolphus Busch. Busch’s connections with the Metz beer family of Omaha led Jones to a job as supervisor for an established Omaha builder.
After making a name for himself with Omaha’s expansion-minded leaders, he founded W. Boyd Jones Construction Company in 1924. Jones began bidding and winning jobs on his own, from small to large, renovations and new construction, private and public. The Sutherland project, for example, was part of a federal program to help the nation recover from the Depression.
During World War II, Jones’ crews helped build cargo boats known as Tank Lighters, which carried tanks and other heavy equipment to the Normandy invasion beaches. The U.S. Army recognized Boyd Jones’ speedy work, which a top officer said saved lives and may have shortened the war.
As W. Boyd Jones built up his business, Louis Pruch, born in Brooklyn, New York, arrived in Omaha at age 2. After graduating from South High School and completing military service, Pruch worked as a draftsman for a design company and, in 1941, joined Boyd Jones as a project estimator.
Robert Owen, a Californian, married Pruch’s daughter, Joanne, and joined the firm. Pruch and Owen ran the business with Jones’ emeritus-style help until Jones died in 1963 and Pruch became president. He semi-retired in 1980, and Owen took over operations.
The premier project during the Owen-Pruch period was the Omaha Community Playhouse in 1958, landed in part through W. Boyd Jones’ presence on the Playhouse board of directors. It was the company’s most significant job since the 1927 Bee-News building, just ahead of Belle Ryan School in 1952.
ustomers over the following decades included schools, banks, hospitals, colleges, government agencies, and TV stations—a wide-ranging list of clients into the 1980s.
Louis Pruch died in 1982, and Owen began nearing retirement age. Enter Roger Crane.
With solid construction and management experience, including serving as president of the highly regarded Foster-Smetana Construction Company of Omaha, Crane was looking to run his own business.
An Iowa native, Crane had used the G.I. Bill to complete his civil engineering degree at Iowa State University. He worked for several large companies—Standard Oil and Northwestern Bell among them—before answering a Wall Street Journal ad by Foster-Smetana seeking a potential future president. But after 12 years, Foster’s owners changed plans, and the Boyd Jones opportunity beckoned.
By then, Crane was well-known in Omaha’s building circles and had met Louis Pruch and Bob Owen. “They were honest people, and their customers had no bad things to say about them,” Crane said. Moving to the much smaller Boyd Jones was a change, but the possibilities were energizing.
“Everybody knew me,” Crane said. “I had been a director of the Chamber of Commerce for a couple of years. I knew all the architects, so I was calling on everybody. I knew there wouldn’t be a problem getting work.”
A few lean years grew into a steady business, including early contracts with the Army Corps of Engineers, the Iowa National Guard, and Offutt Air Force Base.
Crane said business cycles such as the 1980s’ sky-high interest rates were challenging, but conservative financial practices and a steady job flow saw the business through. Annual revenue grew substantially within a few years.
“When he joined, it was about to quietly go away,” said his son, Jon. “Roger was good at what he did. He was a good estimator, and he had some contacts. Without him, it wouldn’t have continued.”
Roger’s decision at Foster-Smetana to start a new company to design and build bank offices parallels Jon’s decision in 2012 to start Bluestem Energy Solutions, a renewable energy company. “Roger was very influential in sustaining and promoting diversification,” Jon said. “He is the foundation of the modern Boyd Jones.”
Jon, who painted welds and performed other “yard boy” tasks in his early years, earned a political science degree and served as an intern for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy before graduating from George Washington Law School.
But he didn’t plan to practice law. “I chose law school over getting an MBA because if nothing else worked out, I could always practice law to pay the bills,” he said. He worked for a real estate development firm and initially rejected his father’s offer to join Boyd Jones. But before long, he married and began looking to have a business of his own and raise a family.
“I had never thought of returning, so when I recognized the opportunity in 1992, it was surprising to find myself coming back to Omaha.” He took over management of Boyd Jones in 2000.
Roger and Jon got along well, working together for 14 1/2 years. “I was Roger’s exit strategy,” Jon said. “I was fortunate to work with him as long as I did.”
Jon was 45 when he completed the purchase of Boyd Jones in 2007, and his father, then 73, retired completely. “I told Jon, ‘I want you to write me a check, and I’m out of here. I’m walking away,’” Roger said.
By then, Boyd Jones was consistently growing. Its reputation was strong, being known for high-quality, on-time, within-budget project outcomes.
Boyd Jones shifted from relying almost solely on low-bid competitive contracts to negotiating contracts through long-term relationships with repeat project owners—“raving fans,” as the Cranes call them.
“Those relationships are precious to have,” Roger said. “You want to make sure that the client gets what they want and are paying what they should pay. You’re working for them. You want future work. That’s important.
“It’s also about getting the right people,” Roger continued. “You want that person who goes out of their way to do things for you, and you have confidence that they will give you the best product.”
Roger said he was confident his son would succeed. “I knew he would take this company to the next level, which he has. He has taken this and grown it immensely. I’m proud of him, and I’m really happy.”
Today, father and son remain close.
“He calls, we have lunch,” Roger said. “We always do that. He asks for ideas. We have a great relationship there, my goodness, and I know he feels the same way.”
Said Jon, “We keep him up to date with our newsletters so he can track what’s going on, more for fun. Really, it wouldn’t be what it is today without him.”
Under Jon’s 32 years of leadership, Boyd Jones has diversified into a national construction company with projects across the country and its home state of Nebraska. Its work spans the commercial, educational, government, housing, community, energy, healthcare, and industrial sectors.
Bluestem Energy Solutions is an independent company that develops, builds, owns, and operates renewable energy facilities, especially wind farms and solar-plus-battery installations. These projects also provide steady work for Boyd Jones crews.
“We built the largest rooftop solar project in the state,” Jon said. “We developed and own the first tandem solar-plus-battery project in Nebraska.”
Boyd Jones’ construction of Riverfront Place Tower II, along the Missouri River near the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, is one of the most visible recent Boyd Jones projects. Its renovation of the Rail & Commerce Building is another. Completed in July 2017, it was one of Nebraska’s largest historic tax credit projects.
Jon and the staff work hard at driving value and fostering a partnership approach that helps Boyd Jones stand out from other contractors because of its track record of controlling costs, meeting schedules, quality workmanship, and ensuring successful outcomes for clients.
“Trying to get a couple of new customers every year and serving them for life,” Jon said. “Our success is grounded in being a family-owned company that takes on varied and complex projects that other companies might not want to tackle.”
He has built a staff that aggressively seeks and builds those relationships, establishing values to engender trust: safety, respect, integrity, innovation, stewardship, entrepreneurship, and continuous improvement.
“Trust is the foundation of business,” Jon said. “If you don’t have that, everything starts to break down. We build extraordinary projects, but it’s really about people. It’s the people and processes paired with sophisticated clients that lead to exceptional results.”
In search of new ideas that work, Boyd Jones’ leaders held a planning retreat last year at the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, the very building that boosted W. Boyd Jones’ career in the early 1900s.
“Just being in the Adolphus Hotel that W. Boyd Jones built was really a special moment for us all,” said George Schuler, executive vice president. “With us celebrating our centennial anniversary, it was nice to reflect on the individual who got it all started and to experience a building he was involved in making happen so long ago.
“You could tell it was built with a lot of quality and care. It just brings things into perspective. We’ve really worked hard to carry on his legacy. I think many of our core values are the same as his.”
For more information, visit boydjones.biz
This article originally appeared in the August/September 2024 issue of B2B Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.