“We really grew up with the construction industry. You can’t have a father like ours and not,” says Elaine McKee-Doel, president, construction manager and co-owner of McKee Homes.

Grace McKee-Howell, who also co-owns McKee Homes, wears at least a couple of hardhats, herself. Now heading both the design and estimating departments and having taken over the multi-family arm run by Martin until his passing a year ago, Grace prides herself in doing business the same way the family patriarch had done.

“My dad said to me ‘sometimes you have to sit and stare out the window’  — and I do, just thinking about things,” she says, adding her father, who started the company in 1987, was a savvy businessman.
You might say the McKee ladies always had construction dust in their veins. Grace recalls how she and her big sister would mow show home lawns — or Martin did, and let the girls cash in, she muses — and it was common for the whole crew to pile into the car and hit one construction site or another.

“We didn’t really know any different,” says Grace, now married with two children of her own.

Still very much a family business two decades later, Grace and Elaine’s husbands are also part of the picture. Rob Doel is sales manager for McKee Homes, while Shaun Howell heads up sales on McKee’s Black Diamond projects. Rob’s brother also sells for McKee, while Rob and Elaine’s boys, aged 10 and 12, have inherited lawn-mowing duties.

McKee currently builds 130 single-family homes a year in Airdrie in King’s Heights, Cooper’s Crossing, Sagewood, Reunion, Luxstone, Thorburn Meadows, and Prairie Springs, and will soon add Ravenswood. The builder also stacks up 20 homes a year in Red Deer and expects to craft eight to ten Black Diamond addresses this year.

But Elaine estimates 1,500 Airdrie abodes are McKee’s creation to date. That’s quite an accomplishment considering the family, who emigrated from Ireland, had planned to dig in roots in Calgary before stopping for lunch in the then town of 5,000 one afternoon in 1981.

“We drove up Centre Avenue and there were all these big trees — and we’d come from Ireland and there are lots of big trees there,” recalls Elaine, adding the building, but not the restaurant, are still in place.

Martin used to liken the building blocks of the company to a three-legged stool and that is still a principle helming McKee today, relates Elaine. “They stand for integrity, quality and honesty. If you don’t have one of those, then the stool won’t stand.”

While the duo acknowledges running a building company is not commonly a job undertaken by a female, let alone two women, both say they don’t really find anything unusual about their workplace.
“I don’t know that the leadership is any different, except it’s certainly not autocratic,” says Elaine. “We like encouraging people to all do well on their own merit. I may know something about one area, and Grace knows something about another, and the construction guys know something else … We really did learn a lot from our father,” says Elaine.

Giving back to the community was one such fundamental, and the company still shares its success through sponsorship — currently working with the Airdrie Food Bank, Airdrie Family Services, the East Lake Recreational and Wellness Centre and local sports teams.

New for 2007 — well timed with the 20th anniversary of the builder — are upgraded “Signature” specifications for all McKee homes, including among them, high-efficiency furnaces. About a dozen of the builder’s models will also qualify for Built Green status due to the improved specifications.

Also in the works is a facelift for the design centre. While the space is smaller than some other builders’ venues, the 1,000-square-foot selection hub is getting new tile, hardwood, and plumbing selections. “It’s very efficient use of space,” says Grace. “We are bringing in a lot more portfolios of things we have done,” she says, adding customers aren’t limited to the design centre offerings.

And to think the second-generation McKee president was on a different path in her career, albeit briefly, when graduating from high school back in 1986. “I was going to be a nurse, like my mother, but that soon faded,” says Elaine, adding the hospital part didn’t agree with her. “I was also considering journalism, and had an interview with the Airdrie Echo — and the same day my dad asked me how I felt about joining the company.”

The rest, as they say, is history. NL