About Dale
A tradesman who has spent a career building homes.
Dale Chila has been in the trades for over 40 years — as an electrician, as a builder, and now as the owner of KEELACO.
Meet Dale
A tradesman who has spent a career building homes.
Dale Chila has been in the trades for over 40 years. He started as an electrician and spent the early part of his career working in both residential and commercial electrical. He later spent roughly 15 years building custom homes and was involved in approximately 75 residential projects throughout the Lower Mainland, including significant and high-profile custom homes.
Among those projects was a home in Canada's first Street of Dreams in 1991. That gives some sense of the level of work Dale has been part of: demanding builds, high standards, and clients who expected things done properly.
That combination — decades of electrical experience alongside years of full home construction — is not common. Most electricians haven't built homes. Most builders don't do their own electrical. Dale has done both, and that background shapes how he approaches every project he takes on today.
A Lifetime Around Homes
Electrical work, home building, and everything in between.
Dale has more than 40 years of electrical experience across both residential and commercial work. His commercial experience includes large-scale projects such as casino construction and renovations in shopping malls and schools. He understands the trade thoroughly: not just how to do the work, but how it fits into the broader construction process.
His building years added a different kind of knowledge. Over 15 years of residential construction, Dale was involved in homes of many different sizes and levels of complexity, including some of the larger and more demanding custom builds in the Lower Mainland. He has managed trades, solved problems on site, and seen what separates a well-built home from one that causes headaches for years.
He is not someone who talks about building homes. He is someone who has built them.
Why Ladysmith
A deliberate choice.
After years of working across the Lower Mainland, Dale made a deliberate decision to move to Ladysmith and build a smaller, more personal business on Vancouver Island. The pace is different here. The projects are different. And that suits him.
Central Vancouver Island has the kind of residential work Dale wants to be doing: additions, renovations, electrical, and the occasional new build. Projects where the quality of the work matters and the homeowner is someone you can have a real conversation with.
A Smaller Way of Doing Business
Fewer projects. More involvement. Better work.
Dale isn't trying to build the biggest construction company on Vancouver Island. He has no interest in running ten projects at once or growing a team large enough that he loses touch with the work. That's a deliberate choice, not a limitation.
KEELACO takes on a limited number of projects so Dale can stay personally involved in each one. He visits the site before quoting. He's reachable throughout the project. He's accountable for the outcome. When you hire KEELACO, you're dealing with Dale: not a project manager, not a crew you've never met.
"When you hire KEELACO, you're dealing with Dale."
Tell Dale about your project.
Free quotes. No obligation. Dale will talk through what you're planning and give you a straight answer on whether it's something KEELACO can help with.