William “Bill” O’Neil II, former CEO and board chairman of Chicago-based W.E. O’Neil, who worked at the company for nearly 50 years, died on April 10, according to the firm. O’Neil was 83.
The grandson of the company’s founder, William Edward O’Neil, Bill O’Neil joined the firm’s ranks in 1967. From there, he worked his way through positions including layout engineer, superintendent, project manager and estimator, according to the builder.
O’Neil became CEO of the firm in 1985. He left the role in 2003, and transitioned to chairman of the board until 2020. During his tenure, the company expanded across the country — it opened its first offices in Los Angeles in 1985; Denver in 1999; and Nashville in 2014, per the firm’s history page.
In 1994, the O’Neil family and company leadership collaborated to establish the beginnings of W.E. O’Neil’s employee stock ownership plan, according to its history page.
ESOPs have since gained prominence in the industry both as a sustainable path for owners to exit their businesses while simultaneously continuing the legacy of the operation via employee ownership. Major ESOP firms in the construction industry include Omaha, Nebraska-based HDR, Kansas City, Phoenix-based Willmeng Construction and San Jose, California-based Rosendin Electric.
“Putting them right up front is the right thing to do,” O’Neil said at the time.
The firm became fully employee-owned under former CEO Brian Ramsay in 2020, who himself retired earlier this year.
“As I worked at W.E. O’Neil over the course of several decades, the one thing that became more and more apparent about Bill O’Neil was that he had two great loves in his life: the love he demonstrated for his family and the love and support that he showed for the employees of O’Neil,” Ramsay said in the news release.
W.E. O’Neil was founded in 1925 and will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. Some of the company’s recent milestones include the acquisition of Austin, Texas-based DCA Construction and the $1.4 billion Midfield Satellite Concourse South project at Los Angeles International Airport. The contractor announced in October that initial construction of the nine segments of the Midfield Satellite Concourse South have been completed offsite.
“He believed every employee should share in what we build together,” said John Finn, the firm’s current CEO, of O’Neil. “Bill’s legacy lives on in the culture he helped shape and the lives he touched.”
