Today, when Pete Riemenschneider walks a Riemco job site, he is the third-generation Riemenschneider to have done so. His grandfather, Bob, and his father, Rob, started the company in 1988, six years before Pete was born. His first job there paid a penny a nail. He was small enough that collecting loose hardware from the ground counted as a real contribution, and on those early mornings following his father through active construction, it did.
That origin shapes how he understands the work now.
Growing Up Riemco
Job sites were a constant in Pete’s childhood. He and his siblings were regulars, starting with small tasks and, as they got older, taking on some light manual labor. The Riemenschneiders were not the only family on those sites. Ron Devine, now Riemco’s Vice President of Construction and Field Management, has been with the company since 1997. His son Drake was out there too, growing up alongside Pete. One year, the holiday card featured all the crew’s kids dressed as elves on an active job site, complete with hard hats. That image captured how the Riemco family understood itself, and how Pete came to understand it, too.
Away, and Back
After high school, Pete spent a season with Prestige, the framing company Riemco has partnered with for decades. It was his first serious, hands-on exposure to carpentry and the build sequence. He had always been drawn to the idea of making his own way somewhere new, and Colorado was where that took him. He settled into a job at the Breckenridge Distillery and stayed for ten years, starting as a bottler and working his way to Head of Distilling, managing production, coordinating vendors, tracking ingredients, and leading a crew of distillers through the entire process from grain to glass.”
“I gained most of my management experience there,” he says. “Coordinating logistics, tracking process, managing people.” When the distillery was acquired by a larger corporation and middle management was eliminated, he took time to figure out what came next. He thought about firefighting and earned his EMT certification, but Michigan and Riemco kept coming to mind.
“It was always in the back of my mind,” he says. “I’d check in with my dad every so often, asking him to let me know if something opened up.”
When the company’s production volume grew and a project management position became available, the timing was right, and Pete was ready. He decided it was time to make the change, return home, and find his place at Riemco.
The Work of Three Generations
Bob and Rob Riemenschneider built Riemco from the ground up. Pete grew up watching them, watching what they had invested take hold. The company is now 38 years old, and several of its relationships go back nearly as long. These are not incidental tenures. They reflect something real about the culture, and about how the team of people inside it understand the work.
The legacy isn’t only in the family name. Ron Devine has been with the company for 28 years, and his son Drake is Riemco’s field supervisor, the second generation of his family at the company. Pat and Dan, two of the field carpenters, have each been part of the crew for more than two decades. Pete grew up alongside the Devines for years: on job sites, at gatherings, in both the small and significant ways two families become woven into each other’s story. Working alongside Ron now, learning from him daily, feels natural in a way Pete says is hard to fully articulate.
“Ron is incredibly patient. I’m never afraid to ask a question, and he answers every one of them the same way, thoroughly and without frustration.” He pauses. “I know how rare that is.”
A Project Manager’s Perspective
Pete’s role puts him in the field at the intersection of clients, trades, and the build itself. He and Ron work in parallel, each taking on projects so that clients receive more direct, consistent attention than a single manager could provide.
For Pete, the foundation of that work is more than the schedule or the trades coordination. It’s the weight of what the project represents to the people who hired Riemco. He knows how personal a home is, how significant the investment, how much trust a client extends when they hand over the most important purchase most of them will ever make. His goal, shared by every Riemco employee, is to produce the best possible outcome within the scope of the project and to make the experience as clear and low-stress as possible for the client, the Riemco team, and the trade partners. That means staying organized, communicating consistently, listening closely, and caring genuinely about the result.
What he finds most engaging isn’t surprising, given his background. “Every day is different. Plans change. You have to think critically and adapt.” The decade spent managing whiskey production, the furniture he refurbishes in his spare time, the vintage car and motorcycle he watched his father tend: all of it built a sensibility for process, precision, and caring for things that are meant to last.
“I like being a part of creating homes people will love, and care for, and cherish for a long time.”
Honored to Carry It Forward
Pete is clear-eyed about what it means to be the third generation at Riemco. His grandfather and father gave the company everything. Being part of the team to carry it forward is something he appreciates now, as an adult, in ways he could not have when he was younger.
“As a kid, it was hard to understand how much they worked, how much they gave. To now be part of that is an honor.”
He sees the legacy through its people as much as through its projects: the carpenters who have invested their careers building Riemco homes, the trade partners who have returned to Riemco sites for decades because the relationship has been earned and kept, the clients who choose the company because they can hear the commitment in the voices of the team of people they speak with and plan dreams with.
“When you talk with Ron or with my Dad, you can hear the dedication in their voices. That’s what builds a client’s trust. That’s what tells them they’re in good hands.”
Riemco builds homes designed to last for generations. That legacy continues.
