Both Dan and Kyle were immersed in the family business and the world of excavating at an early age. Dan jokingly points out that he has been part of LCE “since I could walk.” “My dad picked me up at the public school in the little village where we lived at 3 o’clock in the afternoon to go to work with him,” he recalls. While he has been part of LCE his entire life, Dan didn’t become actively involved in the management component of the business until 1978 to 1980. He took over as president and COO in the late 1980s. Kyle had a similar experience to that of his father when it came to learning the ropes. “My memories of elementary school and high school every day were once the school bell rang, I would go home and put on some scrubs and head over to the shop and help. Every Saturday and every summer, I toured the job sites,” he says. “While I was too young to be working on the sites, I’d ride around with Dad and visit.” He explains he would spend time talking to the equipment operators and ride around in the cabs with them, learning first-hand how the sites and the equipment worked and why the workers were doing certain jobs. Kyle went on to earn an MBA and work for other companies in the field and office before returning to Kingston and to LCE. He stepped into the CEO role in July 2023. An important mandate for him, he says, is building on the “really strong pillars” he saw in the company while he was growing up and that continue today. He is committed to a heavy focus on people development and putting people – including their employees – first. It’s the “people before profit” mindset he witnessed as his father led LCE. “You can’t execute a company if you don’t have the right people and you don’t treat the people well,” he says. “There’s not a lot of turnover here and that speaks volumes to the culture.” He finds it reassuring, he says, that LCE has staff with long tenure including some 20year employees and some 30year employees. The team has grown from less than a dozen employees in the early years to more than 100 today. THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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