Leone & Keeble Inc., a Spokane-based general contractor, anticipates an annual work  volume  of about $60 million worth of projects this year, up from about $52 million last year, says company President Craig Leone. 

Also, its profit margins have been rising steadily during the last few years, says Brendan Monroe, vice president and secretary for the company. 

Located in a two-story, 7,000-square-foot space at 108 W. Boone, Leone & Keeble offers general contracting, construction management, and design-to-build services. A sizable portion of its work involves K-12 and higher-education construction projects. 

“That’s been our bread and butter forever,” he says.

Leone says the company has completed a total of 25 K-12 school projects to the tune of $200 million in the last 10 years. 

Recently, Leone & Keeble, which currently has 66 employees here, won a bid to build a new elementary school, to be called Eastgate Elementary, in Kennewick, Wash. It will construct the nearly $14 million, 56,500-square-foot school next to an older school that will be demolished, after which that site will be turned into playing fields. Construction on the project is planned to begin in April and to be completed in June of 2015. The new two-story school will include a small gymnasium, commons area, and an elevator. It will feature both kindergarten-specific classrooms and general classrooms. 

 The company’s other current school projects include an elementary school and a high school in College Place, Wash., and constructing a pool building at Moses Lake High School. 

In the higher-education sector, the company has a number of ongoing projects at Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Wash. It also recently completed the renovation of Patterson Hall and construction of a new residence hall at Eastern Washington University. 

The company also does projects in the medical and commercial fields. Since becoming Leone & Keeble 22 years ago, it has completed $177 million worth of health care construction projects, Leone says. 

One of the company’s biggest medical clients is Providence St. Mary Medical Center, in Walla Walla. Leone says the company has done all of the construction work at the hospital since 2000. 

“I went down there 14 years ago to bid for a job, and we never left,” he says.

In 2012, the company also constructed a center for women and children for the Union Gospel Mission in Coeur d’Alene, which Leone claims was the first of its kind in North Idaho. The facility was slated originally to cost about $7 million, but through in-kind donations, ended up costing around $6 million, Leone says. 

“We were really thrilled to be selected and be part of that,” he says. 

On the commercial side, Leone & Keeble has completed and is continuing work on a number of finance-sector construction projects, for clients such as Inland Northwest Bank and Numerica Credit Union.

The company started in 1930 as Hazen & Clark; Leone and Paul Keeble bought and renamed it in 1992. It’s been at its current location since about 1953, Leone says.

He says the building originally sat in the Spokane Arena lot, but Hazen & Clark sold the land and relocated the building to its current spot. Leone & Keeble renovated the original building in 2000.  

The two owners kept the name Hazen & Clark while projects started under that name were ongoing, Leone says, and then transferred employees to Leone & Keeble as work was completed. 

“Kind of the way it worked is we did work as Hazen & Clark, and did bids as Leone & Keeble,” he says. “It took about a year to migrate everyone over.”  

Almost all of the workers from Hazen & Clark stayed with the company.  Jeramie Keeble, vice president and treasurer of the company and also Paul Keeble’s son, says that there are still “five or six guys who’ve been here since the late ’70s.”

The company also embraces what’s known as the general contractor/construction manager (GCCM) method for handling business projects. This process brings the general contractor, such as Leone & Keeble, into the project planning process much earlier and allows it to act as a consultant while the project is being designed. 

Leone says the state of Washington started to accept that method 10 years ago, and Leone & Keeble started using it eight years ago. Around that same time, he says, the company also began entering into joint venture projects with other companies. For example, the company has done nine joint venture projects with Walker Construction Inc., of Spokane. 

“It’s allowed us to go after bigger projects,” Leone says. 

Thus far, Leone & Keeble has completed 11 GCCM projects, which also have been joint ventures, to the tune of $150 million, Leone says. The projects were mostly schools, he says. 

The company is licensed to work in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, California, Alaska, and North Dakota. However, it doesn’t usually bid competitively for jobs out of the area, Leone says, but rather negotiates work with an existing client. 

“Typically anytime we go out of the area, it’s negotiated. We go for a regular client,” he says. “That way, we have a better handle on the process from the ground up.” The company does engage in competitive bidding for projects in Washington and North Idaho, he says. 

Looking into 2014, Leone says the company would like to focus on doing more projects here in Spokane. 

“We’ve spent a lot of time on the periphery of Spokane,” he says. “We’d like to try and do a little more work in town.”