FINN: Bill was a a very grounded people person, and he knew that our people are the reason why we succeeded over the past decades. He wanted to make sure that we treated all of our employees well. In 1994, Bill and his dad, Art O’Neil, created a partial employee stock ownership plan at the company. Employees bought out the O’Neil family owners in 2020, and that was one of the legacies Bill wanted to ensure was that going forward, employees had a big stake in the organization.

In earlier undated photo, former CEO William O'Neil II, (right) stands with father Art O’Neil (left), who joined W.E. O’Neil in 1935.
Photo courtesy of W.E. O’Neil

FINN: I became disenfranchised with the size of [his former employer]. I felt more like a number, so I started to think, what else could there be? I looked at lots of different companies, bigger and smaller. I settled on O'Neil because [after] interviewing with [two executives], they told me what I needed to hear at the time: 'John, if you're looking for opportunity, O'Neil's the place for you. Opportunities have only been limited by how hard you work and where your imagination can take you.'

FINN: Technology was supposed to make everything just that much better. But what happened was it started to pull teams apart. Being virtual doesn't always help build a relationship. You need to be face to face. You need to have that time to get to know the person on the other side—how [he or she] is thinking, is going to approach issues and how they will get resolved. Like I said earlier, it doesn't really matter how you get through good times. The test is always how you get through the tougher times. We encourage [younger employees] to pick up the phone and walk a job together with the architect, with the owners or the rep. That's where that real connection can come and I think that's why you're seeing more clients desire that.

FINN: We are a pretty diverse building contractor, involved in almost every market sector throughout the U.S. We had a pivotal moment in California from 2016 to 2018, taking on four $100 million projects at one time, all in different market sectors—retail, gaming, hospitality and multifamily residential. We were just really diverse. That was the moment when the rest of the development community really noticed us. Because we laid those relationship foundations, they were the building blocks for us to negotiate and partners with those clients. When I took over in 2013, we were about a $200- to $250-million revenue operation in California. Now [it’s] an $850-million operation.

 CEO John Finn accepts a Best Place to Work award for W.E. O’Neil Construction.
Photo courtesy of W.E O’Neil

FINN: Now more than ever, those relationships with trade partners are crucial to our business. We're starting to see a little more influx now, although it's not making up for what we lost during the pandemic. In our Arizona market, large projects going up such as data centers and chip manufacturers have really put a strain on overall labor availability, and we have to make sure we have those relationships so we get [workers] to our jobs. It's no different in Chicago, Texas, Tennessee and Colorado, those relationships have to be person-to-person with trade partners, so you can call them and say, “I need to make sure how we work through this issue about getting [workers] here so we hit these deadlines.” Include [those partners] in the process ... to help them have skin in the game.

FINN: Staying true to our values, living our values, is probably the core to our business. If we start to deviate from that, we're going to lose who we are. We have a data and automations group, so really harnessing our own data has been really powerful for us to make informed decisions. The data we have access to today, I wish we had access to 15 years ago. It's really making highly informed decisions about risk, forecasting, workforce availability, scheduling.

FINN: I want to make sure that I don't sit in an ivory tower. I'm traveling quite a bit to talk with all of our employees. Marking our centennial in business this year, my mantra is developing the team to build this company to last for another 100 years, and we can do that through better connections, better relationships and building upon that platform for our younger employees. They are the ones who own the company, and I want to make sure I do right by them.