E.P. Doyle & Son LLC

Bob joined his father’s company in 1960, after earning a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration from Marquette University. The college graduate had an affinity for business and numbers, but his father insisted that the best place to learn the business was on the job site.

So Bob “pounded nails” during the day and did books at night. At the time, E.P. Doyle took on only custom home building; Bob knew there were opportunities in the commercial sector. In fact, several architects approached E.P. Doyle to gauge interest in that type of work. Bob negotiated a series of commercial contracts, and soon had a number of very successful jobs to his credit. Doyle’s reputation, always, since the early days, equated with quality and reliability, was now known in many commercial sectors, such as banking, where it had completed jobs for Hinsdale Federal, MidAmerica Bank, FirstStar Bank and DuPage Bank and Trust, among others.

Bob was every bit the perfectionist in business that his father was in building. He created a business model in which Doyle could complete high-quality commercial jobs, within budget, and to the satisfaction of its growing client list. Pretty soon, the E.P. Doyle name could be seen at job sites all around Glen Ellyn and surrounding communities.

When Tim Doyle was just a little boy, he followed his grandfather around dusty, noisy, sweaty job sites. Work, to young Tim, was play. While Tim naturally possessed that love of carpentry work, he also followed in his father’s footsteps: on to college and professional managerial skills. When Tim graduated from Eastern Illinois, the family business was an old-fashioned concern: a small, steady workflow.

Tim, out of practicality, really, took his first job with a very large Chicago builder, where he quickly took on leadership roles on major projects, such as the redevelopment of Navy Pier. Tim stayed with that firm through boom and bust, and his high value was evident in the fact that he survived while dozens of his colleagues fell victim to tough, competitive times.

Those seven years of intense apprenticeship, not to mention his four years of college, proved invaluable to Tim when he rejoined the family business in 1994. Tim’s rare combination of carpentry, managerial and business skills helped him usher in a new period of growth at E.P. Doyle. He updated the company’s technological capacity, its delivery methods, and generally enabled it to successfully tackle bigger jobs. The trick, Tim knew, was to modernize the company while retaining the values that made E.P. Doyle successful for its first 48 years: honesty, reliability, and integrity. Though the company’s revenues have increased significantly in the past ten years, Tim insists on being involved in the company’s every project.