Crossland Construction

Crossland Construction is a family-owned general contractor based in Columbus, Kansas, where Ivan “Red Iron” Crossland Sr. started the business out of his garage in 1977. It now employs more than 2,000 people across 12 offices in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nebraska and Texas, and it climbed into ENR’s Top 50 contractors in 2025. Crossland leans hard on self-performance, with in-house concrete, steel, rebar and prefabrication crews, and it runs a separate heavy civil arm. Its work spans education, healthcare, industrial, commercial and public buildings. In Bentonville, Arkansas, Crossland is general contractor for the first phase of the Bentonville Institute of Technology campus, a roughly 444,000-square-foot build on Walmart’s former home office site that broke ground Oct. 2, 2026.

An experience modifier rate of 0.34 against an industry average of 1.0 is the number Crossland puts forward first, and it is the right one to lead with for a contractor that self-performs most of its own field work.

The safety program behind it is branded Drive to Zero, built from Plan Ahead, STOP Accidents and ZERO Regrets components, with a jobsite mascot called Safety Doug keeping it visible to crews rather than filed in an office. The AGC National Safety Award for Construction Safety Excellence followed in 2024.

Ivan “Red Iron” Crossland Sr. started the company in 1977 after selling his share of SEK Construction, working out of the family garage. The first office opened in 1987, on the site of today’s Columbus, Kansas headquarters. The business now runs as four arms: Crossland Construction for buildings, Crossland Heavy Contractors for civil and water and wastewater work since 1993, Crossland Prefab for precast, and Crossland Realty for development, leasing and site scouting.

Self-performance is the operating philosophy. Steel erection, concrete, earthwork, carpentry, site utilities and prefabricated systems are all done in-house, supported by a company-owned equipment fleet, in-house concrete batch plants and more than a dozen dedicated steel erection teams. Metal Construction News ranks the company among the nation’s top steel erectors.

Growth has specific markers. Crossland won Pittsburg State University’s new technology center in 1997, then the largest school project in Kansas; the university renamed it the Crossland Technology Center on October 5, 2024. Tulsa’s Gathering Place was completed in 2019, the same year the company reached its billion-dollar-contractor goal a year ahead of schedule. It first appeared on the ENR Top 400 at number 400 in 2001, stood at 79th by its 40th anniversary in 2017, and was ranked 55th as of October 2024 — with the stated target of the national Top 50 by its 50th anniversary in 2027. The ranking on its own pages varies by where you look, so the dated timeline figures are the ones to rely on.

Named work spans the Gathering Place in Tulsa, the Springfield Sports Complex, FireLake Casino and Hotel in Shawnee, the Aquarium at the Boardwalk in Branson, 225 Sycamore Apartments in Wichita, and water and wastewater treatment plants in Topeka, Lawrence, Tulsa and Jenks. Crossland Prefab delivered a Leavenworth precast package of 707 panels under a contract of roughly $12 million.

Workforce development is formalized. Crossland Academy runs an NCCER-accredited craft training curriculum and won the 2026 CURT Workforce Development Award. Published career tracks cover apprenticeship, internship, skilled craft, early-career and professional entry, with a separate veterans hiring page. Crossland Cares is the employee volunteer program.

Subcontractors prequalify through online forms rather than a bid phone line, with currently-bidding projects posted to the company’s isqft portal.