Shane Landers: My Favorite Project
Shane has worked for O’Shea Builders for more than 20 years as a journeyman ironworker, so he’s put up a lot of steel over that time. One of his favorite projects was Koke Mill Medical Center in Springfield.
It started in 1997 and was O’Shea’s biggest build to date, about three times the largest to that point. Done right, it would be a huge feather in the company’s cap. Done wrong… well, that wasn’t an option.
Koke Mill Medical Center was a two-story, 96,000-square-foot medical office building with a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design. The kicker was that it had to be done in 13 months. Pressure was on everybody.
“The Koke Mill Medical Center was one of the first big jobs O’Shea did in terms of ironwork,” Shane said. “We did all the structural steel. We had a lot of older journeymen ironworkers on that. There were probably 12 at one time at Koke Mill. It was nice.”
“We had very good leadership there, and the O’Shea family was just amazed at how fast and how well the building went up.”
A highlight of the experience for Shane was Bud O’Shea’s oversight. “Bud used to drive out every day to check on that job. Bud was a good man, and I think he’d be amazed at how far O’Shea has come from his dad’s time to now,” he shared.
The Koke Mill project led to much bigger medical projects for the company, as well as safety improvements for the ironworkers.
“John Kovalan was just getting his feet wet on the Koke Mill job. It was his first big project as the safety organizer for O’Shea,” Shane recalls. “Back then, safety for the ironworkers was a little different. During that project, John did his research and helped us establish new safety standards. He worked with us really well, especially me and a few other old school connectors.”
Shane continued, “Today, O’Shea has a very, very good safety program for all trades. Their rules go above and beyond OSHA standards, so every team member goes home to their families every night.”
With those safety standards now the “norm” on every O’Shea project, Shane knows those changes were necessary. “Safety is our number one priority, and I feel much safer on the job now that things have shifted for the better,” he said.