Opportunities for Women in the Construction Industry

There’s no doubt about it…women are diversifying the construction industry.  

According to the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), as of Dec. 31, 2016, approximately 939,000 women were employed in various occupation sectors of the construction industry with women making up 9.1 percent of the construction industry in the United States.

Historically, women in the construction industry have been employed in sales and office roles, selling the equipment, products or services used on the construction site, or handling the back office functions related to operations.  However, exposure to construction administration, construction engineering and construction management at the collegiate level has opened the door to professional and management opportunities in the industry.  

Construction administrators perform the administrative duties of a project, monitoring contracts and preparing progress reports that help ensure the project is going according to plan, as contracted. They also coordinate schedules and process invoices ensuring payments don’t get ahead of the work. Construction engineers are civil engineers that design specialized systems. These systems relate to the building itself, or the electrical or mechanical aspects of a building. Construction managers plan, coordinate and oversee construction projects from pre-design through completion, preparing budgets and schedules. Let’s not forget other professional careers such as architects or designers, surveyors, estimators, and building information modelers, just to name a few.

The natural resources, construction & maintenance fields also offer employment opportunities.  Careers in the natural resources field are either offensive or defensive.  Offensive careers involve preserving our natural resources, while defensive careers typically involve some level of environmental protection, protecting not just the environment but also human health. Careers in construction and maintenance ensure buildings are safe, technically sound and up to code.  

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Service careers include skilled trades requiring specific training and manual work, such as carpenters, tile setters and electricians. These types of careers have been overlooked in recent years, due to the phasing out of shop classes in high school and the steering of these students from blue collar careers to white collar careers that require a college education.  This diversion has created a shortage of skilled labor which has spawned an opportunity for those interested in filling in the gaps.

Lastly, there are production, transportation and material moving careers. Production careers focus on scheduling, quality control, ordering of materials, budget management and/or customer relations. Think of someone in a production role as an apprentice to an construction manager.  Transportation careers involve trucking, transit, highways, air, rail, and maritime passage of equipment and materials.  Material moving careers involve feeding or removing materials from equipment, moving materials around a building site or driving materials from one site to another.

As more women are exposed to the broad range of careers in the construction industry, we’ll see more of them in the various occupation sectors noted above.  

Here’s the breakdown of women in the construction industry workforce:

45% Sales & Office

31% Professional and Management

21% Natural Resources, Construction & Maintenance

1.5% Service Occupations

1.4% Production, Transportation & Material Moving

This article was originally published on monicadhiggins.com

One Professional’s Experience

We’ve all been to networking events where people ask “What do you do?” When I tell people that I’m a construction manager, they often want to know what it’s like being woman in the male-dominated construction industry. That’s when I share my experience with an early mentor in the industry.

Not long after starting my construction management firm, I was referred to a contractor by a mutual friend who thought he’d be a good mentor for me because of his residential and commercial construction experience. He was skeptical to meet me because whenever he met a woman in the construction industry, she had the goal of finding a husband – not because of a keen desire for the work.

After learning more about me and my inspiration for becoming a construction manager, he came to the conclusion that I was the “real deal” and had no hidden agenda. That set the tone for a successful mentor-mentee relationship based on mutual respect.

What I admired about my new mentor was that, despite his initial skepticism, he never inferred that I was not capable of doing the job of a construction manager because I was a woman. In fact, since I was focusing on the residential remodeling market and since women initiate 80% of home improvement purchasing decisions, being woman could be an advantage. However, he did let me know that until there are more women in construction industry working on job sites, I would encounter skepticism and unconscious bias since women in the industry were historically employed in office roles, not in the field.

Homeowners prefer working with someone that listens more than talks and makes them feel heard. The fact that I happen to be a woman that possess these characteristics has helped lower their anxiety and build trust early on.

So what’s it like being a woman in the construction industry? For me, it’s awesome helping people bring their dream homes to life.

This article was originally published on monicadhiggins.com

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Written by Monica D. Higgins. January 3, 2018

Monica D. Higgins, MBA, LEED AP, is a former licensed real estate agent turned construction manager driven by a passion for helping people bring their dream homes to life. She is the author of Remodel Success: Home Remodeling Done Right, On Time and On Budget. Get a free preview of the book at www.MonicaDHiggins.com