A Year Ago, Mark Reizer Welcomed a New Job and a New Daughter
For Mark Reizer, last year’s holiday season was one for the ages.
Two days before Thanksgiving, he interviewed for a senior project manager position at Castle. The following day, he and his wife welcomed their second child into the world.
“Within a week, I had an offer letter in hand and a new daughter,” he recalls. “It was a good Christmas present.”
Since joining Castle on January 3, 2022, Reizer has led teams on a variety of mass excavation, site development and utility infrastructure assignments. His project experience include the Markets at Olive development in University City, Bemiston Place apartment complex in Clayton, Wildhorse Village town homes in Chesterfield, O’Loughlin Family Champions Center at Saint Louis University and phase two of the Vandeventer Place housing development in North City.
What Does a Busy Senior Project Manager Do?
At least twice a week, he visits the jobsites of his current projects to check in with the field crews and ensure that everything is on track. “My whole career, I've made it a policy to spend time onsite with superintendents and people in the field,” he says. “Depending on my schedule, I may spend a full day visiting every site or split it up throughout the week.”
Civil construction definitely runs in Reizer’s family. “My great-grandfather, grandfather and father all worked in construction,” he says. For many years, his family owned a civil construction company—Krupp Construction—where Reizer worked as project manager for about 10 years prior to joining Castle.
Yet Reizer initially had his sights set on pursuing a career as an attorney. “I was planning to get my engineering degree and then go to law school,” he recalls, “and then I started taking some LSAT prep courses and decided it just wasn't for me.”
A summer internship at Fred Weber, Inc. helped convince him that construction was an ideal career path. “I worked on the reconstruction of Taum Sauk reservoir in southeastern Missouri, and it was just an incredible experience and made me decide that construction was exactly what I wanted to do,” he says.
After earning his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 2009, Reizer secured his first full-time position as project engineer at Northwind Engineering, a small federal contractor based in Indiana, Pennsylvania, about 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. “It was a Native American-owned business, and I worked on projects for the Department of Energy and Army Corps of Engineers,” he says. “It was really interesting.”
About a year later, he moved back to St. Louis after securing a job as assistant project manager at Environmental Operations Inc., an environmental consultant that provided abatement and demolition services.
In 2010, Reizer also enrolled in the MBA program at Webster University to broaden his expertise. For three years, he attended night classes while working full-time to complete his degree. “I think it's nice to be able to understand accounting, different leadership styles, ownership structures and other business concepts you don't typically learn in engineering school,” he says.
Castle Collaboration Makes for a Welcoming Company Culture
Since joining Castle, Reizer has been impressed by the company’s welcoming, supportive culture. “Across the board, everyone has an ‘If you succeed, we succeed’ mentality,” he says. “We pool our experience and expertise, and it really feels good to have a group of people ready to help you out.”
He’s also an advocate of the company’s widespread use of technology such as GPS, drones and subsurface utility mapping.
Reizer and his wife, Kelsey, live in Wildwood with their two daughters: Emmalyn (3) and Abigail (nearly 1), along with a pit bull named Reese.
Playing golf and watching college football are Reizer’s current hobbies (the Mizzou Tigers and Notre Dame Fighting Irish are his teams of choice). “On Saturdays, I usually have a football game on,” he notes, “and I'm getting my oldest daughter to watch them too, so I'm pretty excited I may have a fellow fan in the household one day.”
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