Sheehy Construction

Sheehy Construction is a family-run general contractor based on West Larpenteur Avenue in St. Paul, Minn., and the Sheehy family has been building since 1955. The company offers general contracting, construction management, design-build and preconstruction, and it advertises fast-track delivery for owners on tight schedules. Its work is commercial and institutional, mostly around the Twin Cities, and the business has been handed down from one generation of the family to the next, along with a reputation it guards closely. At Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Sheehy is the primary contractor on the Concourse G expansion, one of several projects reshaping Terminal 1 alongside JE Dunn’s energy plant replacement.

Nine market groups organize the work, and the list is more specific than most contractors publish: airport, education, historic, healthcare, industrial, government, office and retail, transportation and rail, and worship. Keeping historic as its own category alongside airport and rail says something about where the firm is comfortable — all three involve working around something that cannot be shut down or replaced.

Recent projects bear that out, and they are smaller and more surgical than a market-sector list implies. Fire alarm system upgrades at the University of Minnesota’s CCC building. An HVAC replacement at the University of Minnesota Arboretum’s rare books library — a job where the collection sets the tolerances, not the mechanical schedule. A Room 121 restack renovation for the City of Minneapolis. A ticket vending machine relocation for the Metropolitan Council at 46th Street and Nicollet. An Amtrak water station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is a reminder that rail work travels.

That mix is the practical version of what the firm advertises. Systems replacement inside a working building, a department move inside a city hall, and a transit fixture relocated on a live platform are all jobs where the schedule is set by the owner’s operations.

On delivery, four approaches are offered — general contracting, construction management, design/build and fast-track — with pre-construction and project budgeting listed as separate services. Project budgeting as a standalone line matters for an owner who needs a number before the drawings exist, which is the ordinary situation for a public body seeking funding.

Safety is handled as an assignment rather than a policy. Responsibility sits with site superintendents, project managers and supervisors, who are tasked with training crews and warning them of hazards. The firm states its Experience Modification Rate for workers’ compensation has consistently ranked among the lowest in the industry — a number insurers set, not marketing.

The staff roster runs to 13 named people: a president, four vice presidents, three project managers, three assistant project managers and two accountants. That is a small, flat organization, and it explains how the firm ends up on jobs that are too specialized for a large contractor to want.

Trade partners are courted through a dedicated subcontractor opportunities page. The office is at 360 West Larpenteur Avenue, reachable at (651) 488-6691.