On the 'A-Team'

Jeff Halsey has one thing in common with the unflappable Hannibal Smith from the "The A-Team" 1980s action TV series: They both "love it when a plan comes together."

Halsey, a superintendent for Swank Enterprises who is overseeing the $42 million surgical tower expansion of Kalispell Regional Medial Center, dubbed himself part of "The A-Team" 30 years ago when he and his brother Tom arrived in Eastern Montana ready to work in the Williston Basin oil patch.

He had hats made for him and his "cowboy buddies," more or less for fun. One set said "The A-Team." The other set said "The B-Team."

After a lifetime in the construction business, Halsey, 50, has been one of the top dogs for some time now. His business card with Swank lists him as "A-Team" superintendent.

OVERSEEING A complicated job such as the Kalispell Regional expansion is stressful, he admitted. Putting in 32 steel support columns over the past four to five months while the hospital has remained in operation has been a challenge. Crews began pouring concrete last May and have poured concrete every week until just last week, he said.

A 160-foot high crane with a 262-foot radius that looms above the project has been used to install the steel columns.

"That crane swings over the hospital; I can't have a wreck," he said, emphasizing how paramount safety is at the job site.

Along with lifting steel for the skeleton of the tower, the crane will hoist heavy materials such as drywall during interior construction.

By summer there will be well over 100 construction workers onsite, and on Halsey's watch. But it's the kind of work he loves.

IT WAS A building-trades instructor at Halsey's hometown high school in Albion, Ind., who sparked his interest in carpentry work.

"The man was a perfectionist, and the greatest teacher," Halsey said. "He just passed away a month ago. He was a super man."

Halsey had some building genes in his blood to begin with, though. Both his father and grandfather were carpenters. In fact, his 92-year-old grandfather still travels to the Flathead every summer to keep tabs on him.

After graduating fifth in his class, Halsey contemplated a career in civil engineering and had a scholarship to attend a college in Iowa. But once he got there, he turned around and went back home, never taking a single class.

"I was tired of people telling me what to do," he shrugged. "I went through the school of hard knocks instead."

He headed to Atlanta, where he helped build a 22,000-square-foot upscale home for Bert Lance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter who resigned in 1977 after a scandal.

Halsey didn't much care for Georgia, so he bounced back to Indiana and waited for his younger brother to finish high school. The two of them headed to Montana in 1982, ready to make their fortune in the oil fields about the same time the oil boom went bust.

After a few calls to carpenters in the area, Halsey quickly landed on his feet with a construction firm in Roundup for a time before joining the crew with C & D Contractors in Helena. That was the springboard for big construction jobs in cities such as Pullman, Wash.; Lewiston, Idaho; and Whitefish, where he was superintendent for the construction of the Whitefish Post Office in 1985.

HE WOUND UP staying in Whitefish after he met Judy, who would become his wife.

"I never left," he said.

His path converged with Swank while he was working on a parking structure for C & D at the same time Swank was completing an airport project in Billings.

"I started talking to Dewey Swank and he said, ‘Yeah, we can get you a job,'" Halsey recalled.

Not long after Halsey married Judy in 1991, Dewey Swank called to say he'd be working on the Heritage Place long-term care facility in Kalispell.

Halsey's first job as a superintendent for Swank was the expansion of Muldown Elementary School in the early 1990s.

Since then, he has overseen a number of major projects, including the expansion of Glacier Park International Airport, a new Kalispell facility for Bonneville Power Administration, the first patient tower for Kalispell Regional several years ago, the new North Valley Hospital, St. Luke Community Hospital in Ronan, a pre-release center in Anaconda and the reconstruction of Mead High School in Spokane.

THE MEAD High School project, a complicated renovation and expansion of a 236,000-square-foot building on one level, is the project Halsey is most proud of, he said.

"It was the toughest," he said. "The high school superintendent told us the job couldn't be done."

But Halsey and Swank proved them wrong, and today an appreciation plaque with photographs of Mead High School hangs on the wall of the construction trailer.

Since Halsey joined the Swank team in 1991, he has completed $166 million worth of construction for the company.

"They've been great to work for," he said about Swank. "They're real family-oriented."

Halsey's brother Tom, his only sibling, also is a superintendent for Swank, based in Helena, further evidence of the family's disposition toward the building trade.

"It's all self-taught," Halsey said of his expertise. "I started as a laborer, pushing a broom. Of course that didn't last very long."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.