Key Construction adjusts staffing levels while waiting for projects to start

WICHITA — Key Construction laid off seven of its 110 employees in Wichita last week, including four assistant project managers and three clerical workers.

“We’ve got a couple of projects wrapping up,” says chief financial officer John Walker.

There are some new projects on the horizon, he says, “But not as soon as we’d like.”

Financing and getting commitments take longer than in the past.

“Everything takes a little bit longer to start right now,” Walker says.

About a month ago, Key laid off five of its 26 workers in its Dallas-Fort Worth office.

Walker says that area is much harder hit.

“We have so many opportunities down in that office that we don’t have in other markets, but you still have to adjust to the amount of work that you have and that you’re going to get.”

Key has a total of 175 employees.

“There’s a lot of good things happening,” Walker says. “We just need them to happen faster.”

  • payasyougo

    Key is another very good company run by 2 brothers starting from scratch the hard way. A good example of how you can do well starting with very little money. As I recall, they started by buying “fix up” houses many years ago and grew from there. we were fortunate to handle some of these homes and David and Ken were very nice to work with. Another Wichita sucess story.

  • WichitaWordsmith

    Sounds like good business to me. The construction business has never been year-round stable. They are making some tough choices now to avoid the really hard choices later. Good for them!

  • ColtDucksnort

    They treat their subcontractors like dirt. A sub bids the job, is the low bidder, then they tell him he has to lower his price by 10% or they will give it to someone else.

    They are a pack of weasels with very unethical business practices.