For The Reporter

“The opportunity to be first only comes along once,” said Charles Doyle, president of C.E. Doyle, LLC. The company is the first contractor in Wisconsin to construct buildings using the super energy-efficient THERMOMASS tilt-up concrete wall panel system.

Based on the outskirts of the tiny town of Ashford, about 18 miles south of Fond du Lac, the company does business from Oregon to New York. A recent project was quoted at $6.8 million.

Founded in 1974 by Doyle, the business has evolved from masonry subcontracting to design/build contracting in which the entire project from architectural design to engineering and building construction is undertaken by C.E. Doyle L.L.C.

The business had a humble beginning. After leaving active duty with the military in the late ’60s, Chuck Doyle learned the skill trade of masonry and worked as a bricklayer for about six years.

In 1974, with a $1,500 loan from the bank, and one laborer on the payroll, C.E. Doyle, the business, took shape and grew.

“At first, I built barns and houses and did some work in Fond du Lac,” Doyle said. “As I developed my crews, we started getting into commercial work. By 1982 I was getting so much work in Milwaukee that we weren’t doing any work in this area anymore.”

Doyle said the company was primarily known as a large masonry contractor, and in the mid-80s it was the largest.

“It was us and about six other companies that did most of the work,” he said.

Some hundreds of projects that C.E. Doyle L.L.C. worked in the Milwaukee area include Sullivan Dental in West Allis, Home Depot, Model Olds, Ace Worldwide Storage and buildings in the Germantown and Menomonee Falls Industrial Parks.

“Our business changed dramatically in 1989 when we moved to this new THERMOMASS technology,” Doyle said. “We had been studying and keeping track of the Department of Energy’s testing of the product. We saw that this was very efficient, that energy codes were going to be tougher, and that there were going to have to be changes in how we constructed buildings.”

THERMOMASS technology uses a rigid insulation panel sandwiches between two concrete panels or wythes of concrete. The wythes are connected by fiber composite rods. The US Department of Energy reports that the panels are 99.7 percent thermally efficient.

The wall panels are cast and erected on site, using cranes to tilt-up the cast panels into place. On-site construction takes place year-round in any season.

“I call it site-manufactured – wall panels set in place by a crane,” Doyle said. “But, tilt-concrete, the old term, stuck.”

Doyle said his idea was to make a leap forward and change the complete direction of the business.

“In 1989, we became a design/builder and the first in the state to introduce THERMOMASS technology,” he said. “Business as usual was not usual anymore.”

Doyle said the change made his old accounts unhappy because now was competing with them.

“Introducing this better technology, I was under the mistaken assumption that it would be welcomed with open arms because it was so much better,” he said. “Wrong. We had to prove it. If you’re going into new technology or a better mousetrap, you have to catch a lot of mice before people buy it.”

Doyle said his company was marketing this product and nobody cared. Finding the first clients for the changed business was difficult, according to Doyle.

With the changeover from concrete/masonry subcontracting to design/building and engineering, 75 percent of the company’s accounts “unraveled.”

“Finding our first client was difficult because no one wants to be first,” Doyle said.

Then a client showed up who need a place to house valuable dogs.

“It’s comical that the very first THERMOMASS building in the state was a very elaborate dog kennel we built for Cadens Kennels near Campbellsport,” Doyle said.

The second project was for a lumber company in Mellen, Wis.

“For lumber companies that build up in the northwoods, a value to them is that these buildings won’t burn down,” Doyle said.

Steel buildings attached to or next to THERMOASS structures have burned down and business in the concrete building has continued uninterrupted, according to Doyle.

“We can build three times as fast with one-third the crew and two-thirds of the cost in materials,” he said. “We build faster using fewer man hours and produce faster.”

The company markets through world-of-mouth. In recent years, 70 percent of our business has been repeat.

“Heavy industry has a big interest in our product,” Doyle said. “It’s very tough and durable reinforced concrete.”

Nationwide, tilt-up structures represent almost half of all new low-rise commercial building projects.

Doyle said the system is very economical. Since the buildings are so energy-efficient, the heating and cooling costs are less than one-third of the costs paid by owners operating similar size facilities made of conventional building materials.

“Architecturally, we can make them look like anything (the client wants),” he said.

Doyle’s own modern headquarters on Highway 67, three miles east of Highway 41, is a THERMOASS structure.

The Theresa Town Hall and service garage and a 264,000-square-foot structure for American Tissue Company in Neenah are among recently completed area projects by C.E. Doyle L.L.C.

“We started very simply and it’s kind of unique where we are,” he said. “I haven’t ranged far from where I started. I live a mile north of here and could walk home; my wife’s father’s farm is across the road. My wife was born in the house and took her first breath 100 feet from these offices,” he said.

Running his service-oriented business where “a problem is an opportunity,” Doyle said, “It’s easier for us to be the design/builder – and we love to work with other architects.”

A business that started in 1974 and changed drastically in 1989 continues to grow and prosper today.

Doyle didn’t make a better mousetrap; he built a better dog kennel, and the state’s first THERMOMASS building.

“I’ve got a better product,” he said quite simply.