Rare Sight on Site

Female Project Managers Still Proving Themselves

by Paula Widholm

The path to a career can start in the most unlikely of places. Aleisha Jaeger, a project manager in the Indianapolis office of Minneapolis-based contractor Opus North Corp., says her interest in construction was sparked when she worked an odd summer job as a teenager helping build potato cellars in Idaho.

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“They’re half silos lying down,” Jaeger says. “That’s where I got interested in construction. I’ve always been interested in the process of teamwork and how everyone works together to build something.”

The interest was solidified later at Marquette University where Jaeger was a student when Opus spoke to a freshman class about development and construction.

“From then on I decided that’s what I want,” Jaeger recalls. “I wanted to build buildings.”

Today, there are women working in various capacities at most contracting firms. Ditto with architecture firms.

But they’re not at construction sites, where there are few female faces, even though data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of women in the construction is up slightly. (See the sidebar story.)

So what’s the problem? How far do women who aspire to be project managers or similar jobs still need to travel? Recently, Midwest Construction visited two women with significant construction-site responsibilities to get an idea of the challenges and rewards of being project managers.

Dealing with the Guys

For Jaeger, entering a male-dominated field didn’t faze her. In fact, she says some multitasking and organization skills that come naturally to women also come in handy on the job.

“I’m going a million different directions and focusing on four or five different things at the same time and organizing it all,” she says. “Multitasking is a trait that women possess. I get an adrenaline rush out of seeing chaos and making order out of it. Construction is dealing with chaos all the time.”

As far as treatment on the jobsite, Jaeger says there are still a few old-school guys hesitant to work with a woman.

“It depends on the region,” she says. “In some areas of the country, even some young people have that mentality, and I think, ‘How can you be my age and still think that way?’”

To distill these notions, Jaeger advises women in construction management to work twice as hard.

“You constantly have to prove yourself and be thinking ahead and doing things faster than others thought of it,” she says. “You have to get in with the field guys and not expect different treatment. You have to pay your dues like everyone else.

“Once you’ve gained their respect, it’s not an issue ever again. You can’t be shy or meek, but you can’t be overbearing and demanding.”

Jaeger has been in construction management for eight years and says being young in the field can be an even bigger handicap. She has managed projects from small tenant improvements to large retail, industrial and office projects.

For the Burr Ridge Village Center in southwest suburban Chicago, an approximately $150 million mixed-use retail center, Jaeger was called in after the project got under way.

“It got out of control initially, and I was brought on to get the schedule back on track and to get the subcontractors working together again,” she says. “We had 40 tenants coming online at the same time.”

Home Front Support

Like most women project managers with families, Jaeger gets support from home.

“For me, it’s easy to put work first,” Jaeger says. “It’s knowing what to sacrifice, and when you add family into the mix, it’s more and more hectic. You have to prioritize and have an understanding husband.”

Although Jaeger doesn’t yet have children, she says she knows some women who are balancing project manager careers and motherhood. For these women, “everything has to be coordinated at home with an equal sharing of home duties,” Jaeger says. “You can’t be the one who cooks and cleans and does everything.

“The kind of men who marry women in this kind of business know they’re getting into chaos. It’s all about teamwork at home and really good communication.”

Opus also provides flexible schedules when employees become new parents, Jaeger adds.

Jenny Davis, a project manager with Clark Construction in Chicago, says that working for a forward-thinking company with many women engineers, managers and vice presidents has been essential to her career advancement.

She has been with the Bethesda, Md.-based firm since she completed a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison about 10 years ago.

“Basically you have to prove yourself like anyone has to prove themselves,” Davis says. “There’s no ceiling. The sky’s the limit. Everyone’s treated fairly and given opportunities to move up.”

Davis began her career managing the construction of a federal courthouse in Omaha, Neb., for 1.5 years. She then worked on Miller Park, a project engineer, in Milwaukee, for about three years. Then it was off to a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for two years and then to her current job managing the $200 million Great Lakes Navy Base Camp Porter barracks and infrastructure project.

Davis, 33, admits that not being married does make it easier for her to up and move. “I like going on the out-of-town projects because when you have a team where everyone moves to a city to build a project, you become very tight,” she says.

Industry Tutelage

Davis’ mentor was Katie Twomey, a Clark vice president that has overseen several high-profile projects, including the McCormick Place West Building expansion, an $850 million project.

“We talked on the phone the first couple of months after I was hired,” Davis says. “She was someone I could go to.”

Now, Davis has the opportunity to mentor others. “We’ve had a couple of female interns, and we’ve been encouraging them to seek us out, and we’re seeking them when they graduate,” she says.

Her advice to young women is that “if you’re interested in construction, go for it. It’s a lot of fun day to day. There’s always something new going on. When you’re building buildings, you’re never building the same thing twice. As far as being a women, you’ve just got to go into it with your eyes open and earn respect and respect will be given to you.”

On her current project, Davis says she’s proud that her team has completed the last number of buildings early. “To turn something over to a client before they expected it is huge,” she adds.

But, Davis admits “there’s nothing like opening a stadium. It’s one of the coolest experiences ever being there for opening day and seeing 45,000 people enjoying this facility you’ve put all your time into.”

SIDEBAR

Women in Construction Up Slightly Over 4 Years

Organizations like the National Association of Women in Construction and CREW Network hope to see more women share in the rewarding career challenges of construction-management experience.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of women in the construction industry was at 1 million in 2002 and has risen to 1.13 million in 2006. However, more than half of those jobs are office and sales positions.

The bureau also reported that about 291,000 women nationwide held professional and management positions in construction in 2006. The total number of workers in construction that year was 11.74 million.

“It’s still a struggle and a constant battle,” says Cindy Dekker, a senior sales representative for Satellite Shelters, Lockport, and president of the Chicago chapter of NAWIC. “The national association tries to promote advancement and development. Locally, we have a scholarship program and career days at the local community colleges.”

Nationally, NAWIC and CREW Network an organization for women in commercial real estate offer conventions, forums, awards programs and an online career center. Most important, the local chapters help women pair up with female mentors in the industry.

“It’s all about networking and finding someone you can seek advice from,” says Aleisha Jaeger, a project manager in the Indianapolis office of Minneapolis-based contractor Opus North Corp. “A man is not going to tell you how something works from a female perspective.”

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