Employee Spotlight: Superintendent Corey Mumme

2 years, 6 months ago

Corey Mumme always knew he was going to spend his life building and fixing things.

“I’m just good with my hands,” he said.

In wood shop and welding class at Burlington High School before he graduated in 1990, that resulted in good grades. On weekends, he found success racing four-wheelers, and earned a Top 5 ranking nationally on the open pro-am circuit.

And at Carl A. Nelson & Company, those skilled hands have fueled Mumme’s advancement through the ranks from helper to Project Superintendent and shareholder during 33 years with the employee-owned company.

Early in his career, which began in 1989 during his senior year of high school, work was a means to pay for his racing pursuits. Eventually, though, after getting married and starting a family, his job became a means to other ends. Along the way, Mumme said he learned about leadership from the veteran superintendents he worked under before he got the chance to run work himself.

“Probably everything comes from them,” he said.

Mumme was working on a crew building the City of Mount Pleasant, Iowa’s new wastewater treatment plant when he made foreman. He was working at Ajinomoto North America in Eddyville, Iowa, on construction of its new MSG production facility when he stepped up to project foreman, and was still on the job when he advanced to superintendent in 2016.

In the early 1990s, Mumme took a second job in anticipation of a layoff that never came. Instead of leaving, he became one of CANCO’s more than 30 employee owners in 2019. Over three decades, he has worked on schools, nursing homes and hospitals and plenty of industrial sites. The latter has been his primary niche.

“Anything with steel is my cup of tea, I guess,” he said. “Iron work and concrete, you name it.”

Process facilities in the food industry are especially appealing, Mumme said, explaining they are a source of constant learning because equipment and methods in production facilities keep changing. The kind of variety of projects he has seen at CANCO has helped keep the work interesting over 30 years.

“You’re not stuck doing the same thing job after job,” Mumme said. “You’re always doing something different.”

Although he has led construction management projects, Mumme said he prefers design-build and general contract projects where he is able to work with CANCO’s own construction craftsmen to get the work done. That puts him in the same position as superintendents of his days as a young construction craftsman, providing guidance to a new generation of future superintendents and foremen.

Mumme resides in Mount Pleasant with his wife, Tammy, who owns a salon and spa in their hometown. They celebrate 28 years of marriage in 2022, have two children — Dillyn, 27, in Texas, is a NASA flight controller; and Jayde, 25, in Fairfield, Iowa, who works in marketing and fashion design for Overland Outfitters — and will welcome a granddaughter this summer.

Away from the jobsite, and when not tending to their building on the square in downtown Mount Pleasant, which includes the salon and leased space for commercial and residential tenants, Mumme enjoys boating and camping, with Mark Twain Lake near Hannibal, Missouri, being a favorite spot for skiing, tubing, knee-boarding and wake-boarding.

— Craig T. Neises, director of marketing