From Construction Engineer to Construction Business Owner: Building a Company Where Technical Judgment Serves People
The Curatola Group is taking shape around a simple belief: the best construction companies do more than build projects. They protect owners, support the field, develop people, and create opportunities that last beyond the built project.
For Dax Clapsaddle, P.E., that belief is the product of a career spent on both sides of the construction equation. He has worked where plans become means and methods, where estimates become project commitments, and where technical decisions carry real consequences for safety, schedule, cost, and for the people performing the work.
The path for Dax from construction engineer to business owner was not a departure from construction. It was a return to its full picture. Engineering has taught Dax how to understand risk. Entrepreneurship taught him how to carry it. The Curatola Group is where those lessons come together.
Learning Construction Where the Work Gets Real
Clapsaddle began his career as a construction engineer for a marine heavy civil construction company on large bridge, levee,and dam projects. Over the next 17 years, he built experience across survey layout, 3D modeling, estimating, in-house engineering, deep foundations, shoring, marine work, and complex construction planning. For roughly 12 of those years, he managed survey layout, modeling, and engineering functions for George J. Igel & Co., one of Central Ohio’s major heavy-civil contractors.
That environment formed his view of the business. Drawings matter, but a drawing is only valuable if it can be built safely and efficiently. An estimate is not merely a number; it is a promise about scope, production, risk, and execution. An office system is not paperwork for its own sake. It should help the people in the field make good decisions and perform their work successfully.
Clapsaddle came to see the field as the heart and soul of a construction company. The office exists to support it with planning, engineering, estimating, clear procedures, business development, and disciplined financial management. That field-first philosophy remains central to how he sees The Curatola Group.
From Specialist to Builder of a Business
Over time, Clapsaddle’s responsibilities expanded beyond technical work. He moved into estimating and helped build drilling, piling, and shoring into a standard service offering at Igel. Clapsaddle has since been known as “The Shoring Guy” by several general contractors in Central Ohio, a name he cherishes. The experience changed his understanding of leadership. Growth did not come from technical knowledge alone. It required finding the right work, defining scope before problems appeared, pricing risk honestly, creating repeatable systems, and giving capable people room to lead.
In 2024, he left the security of an established contractor to build Structured Design & Consulting. The decision tested him in new ways. As a professional engineer and business owner, he became responsible not only for the answer, but also for the client relationship, payroll, contracts, cash flow, quality control, and the long-term reputation attached to every decision.
Structured Design & Consulting gave Clapsaddle a deeper appreciation for entrepreneurship. It also clarified his larger calling. He could build a respected engineering practice, but he wanted a vehicle capable of creating broader opportunities. Clapsaddle wanted to create more careers, stronger trade development, better service to owners, and a business that could change families and communities over time.
A Partnership Built on Complementary Strengths
The relationship between Clapsaddle and Justin Curatola developed through real work and earned trust. Curatola brought field leadership, masonry expertise, operational energy, and a natural ability to connect people. Clapsaddle brought engineering judgment, estimating, preconstruction strategy, risk control, and the systems needed to turn opportunity into repeatable execution.
They did not need to become the same kind of leader. Their value is in the contrast. Curatola could see possibilities in the market and rally people around them. Clapsaddle could pressure-test those possibilities, clarify the scope, organize the work, and build the structure required to deliver consistently. Together, they saw the outline of a construction company that could close a persistent gap in the industry between design intent and field reality.
That company became The Curatola Group: an engineering-informed general contractor and construction-management platform designed to solve complex facility and infrastructure challenges through practical field execution. Its initial focus is disciplined and regional, serving Central Ohio owners, municipalities, institutions, and commercial or industrial facilities through masonry restoration, structural repair, concrete and site work, demolition, and light commercial general contracting.
The Vision: An Owner’s Construction Department Without the Overhead
Clapsaddle sees The Curatola Group becoming the trusted construction department for owners who lack an internal construction department. Many facilities face projects that are too important to manage casually but too specialized to justify building a full in-house team. They need someone who can investigate a failure, define the real scope, develop a constructible solution, coordinate qualified contractors, control changes, document decisions, and stay accountable through completion.
The Curatola Group is built for that gap. Its value is not simply that engineering and construction can be coordinated. It is that the owner gains an experienced advocate who understands how the design, contract, budget, schedule, and field conditions affect one another. Professional engineering services remain clearly scoped through Structured Design & Consulting, preserving the ethical and contractual boundaries that protect the client and the integrity of the work.
Over time, Clapsaddle believes this model can grow from focused Central Ohio projects into a regional platform serving facility portfolios across the Midwest. The goal is not growth for its own sake. The goal is to earn recurring relationships with good owners, become known for solving high-consequence problems, and scale through systems without becoming slow, impersonal, or distracted by work that does not fit.
Building People Is Part of Building the Company
For Clapsaddle, the long-term measure of the business will not be revenue alone. He wants The Curatola Group to be a place where employees can build meaningful careers, share in the results they help produce, and grow into leadership. The early vision includes profit sharing, strong benefits, mentorship, and a culture that promotes from within.
That commitment is rooted in a conviction that construction companies should not build fortunes on the backs of tradespeople while treating them as replaceable. Leaders should serve the people doing the work. When field teams are respected, equipped, and trusted, they carry that same care into their work and the client relationships.
“The field is the heart and soul of the company. The office has one job: give our people the support, clarity, and opportunity they need to succeed.”
The Growth of the Owner Behind the Business
Clapsaddle’s development is still underway. The engineer in him wants to understand every detail. The entrepreneur in him has learned that carrying every detail eventually limits the organization. His next challenge is to become the CEO who creates clarity, delegates real authority, holds people accountable with fairness, and allows the company to grow beyond his own capacity.
That transition requires more than new systems. It requires patience, trust, and the discipline to lead without micromanaging. Clapsaddle describes his approach as leading with heart while remaining clear about standards. His Christian faith shapes the kind of leader he wants to become: responsible without being controlling, ambitious without losing perspective, and willing to extend grace while still expecting people to honor their commitments.
He also sees a responsibility to help younger professionals and tradespeople find a path into construction. The industry does not only need workers. It needs mentors who will explain the why behind the work, share judgment earned through experience, and give people a real chance to grow.
A Company Designed to Last
The Curatola Group’s vision is grounded in disciplined growth: protect cash, control risk, build trusted partnerships, hire for values, and reinvest in people and communities.
With that foundation, the company aims to become more than a contractor—a platform connecting engineering, construction management, and field expertise around each owner’s needs.
Clapsaddle’s guiding question has evolved from “How do we build this?” to “What are we building through the company itself?” His answer is a business built to protect clients, support the field, develop leaders, and create lasting opportunity.
About Dax Clapsaddle
Dax Clapsaddle, P.E., is a construction executive, professional engineer, and Partner at The Curatola Group. He is also CEO and Managing Member of Structured Design & Consulting. His background spans heavy-civil construction, bridges, deep foundations, temporary structures, estimating, constructability, structural engineering, and business leadership. He focuses on building practical systems that connect technical judgment with safe, efficient field execution.
About The Curatola Group
The Curatola Group is a Central Ohio general contractor and construction-management company focused on engineering-informed solutions for facilities, commercial and industrial properties, municipalities, and institutions. Its work includes project coordination, preconstruction, estimating, scope development, contractor management, masonry restoration, structural repair, concrete and site work, demolition, and light commercial construction. Professional engineering services are provided under separately defined scopes through Structured Design & Consulting.
