Editorial: 01.26.2022

Craig Dulle Enjoys the Pace and Variety of Civil Construction

craig dulle

A love of numbers initially led Craig Dulle to pursue a career in accounting. But it wasn’t long before he realized accounting was not the right field for him.

“I guess I didn't take into account that I'd be sitting behind a desk all day long,” says Dulle, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business before securing his first professional job. “Every day was like Groundhog Day."

When his friend, John Berra Jr., offered Dulle a position at his family’s construction company, he welcomed the opportunity to develop his skills in managing site development projects.

“I'd been working around construction since I was 16,” he says, recalling a few summers that he worked in a construction shop to earn extra cash for college. But Dulle hadn’t seriously considered construction as a long-term career until he discovered how much he enjoyed the fast pace and diversity of the work.

“There’s a different challenge almost every day,” he says. “Some days you're on top of the world, and some days you’re just trying to stay afloat.”

Working in Civil Construction

In 2014, Dulle joined the Castle team as a project manager and estimator within the MEP civil group. His specialty is managing projects that involve the installation of sanitary storm sewers, water lines and other utilities infrastructure.

His first Castle project—and one of the most challenging of his career—involved the installation of utilities infrastructure along Duncan Avenue and Newstead Avenue as part of the original development of the Cortex Innovation Community. “It was a pretty complex project,” he recalls. “You just had so many utilities in a small area. It was quite an adventure.”

He credits Castle’s in-house subsurface utility mapping expertise for the project’s success. “They located all of the existing utilities and figured out a way to install the storm sewer line around all those utilities with no shutdowns at all,” he says.

Through the years, Dulle’s accounting background has proven valuable to his daily work. “If you're estimating, you’ve got to be disciplined so you can hit your deadlines,” he says. “And with project management, it's important to have everything organized before you start a project and to stay organized.”

Dulle’s favorite part of working at Castle is the opportunity to work alongside talented people. “From management on down, you can't get much better than these folks,” he says. One of his coworkers is his brother, Kurt, who currently leads the MEP civil group.

A lifelong resident of Oakville, Mo., Dulle is married and has two daughters, a son and two grandchildren.  

All of his kids have excelled in athletics. His daughters played soccer and his son won a national championship in hockey. Cameron also pitched for the Mizzou Tigers baseball team and got drafted in 2019 by the St. Louis Cardinals organization, where he played for a year.

Outside work, Dulle enjoys spending time with his grandkids, setting up tailgates for Mizzou football games and playing golf.

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