Women in the construction sector are anxious to tackle the challenges of the industry’s post-pandemic recovery—leading forays into major new growth markets and launching creative approaches to current workplace transitions and the still nagging problem of employee and business diversity.

大流行带来的工作场所变化的影响是由ENR和建筑律师事务所Peckar＆Abramson赞助的700多名行业参与者的关键主题，并于5月11日至12日在旧金山举行。新利luck

Andra Kidd, chief operating officer of engineer Verdantas, shared new data from a broader business workplace survey by research consultant Employee Engagement Group, indicating that only 17% of respondents said all employees had returned to an office or field site full-time, with 30% reporting that only one-quarter of staff had done so.

About 36% of survey respondents said they will continue to offer “unlimited flexibility” if jobs allow for it, while just 5.7% have made on-site work required, Kidd said, adding that 29% have allowed employees to choose “core days” for office work versus 11.4% that have management deciding.

About 51% of GWIC attendee respondents said in an instant poll that their workplaces now have a hybrid office-remote work arrangement. The conference, held live May 11-12 for the first time in three years, drew more than 700 industry attendees in San Francisco.
照片：罗斯·马洛（Ross Marlowe）/照片小组

基德说：“尽管人们越来越回到办公室，但远程员工仍在这里留下来。”“维持文化和发展员工职业轨道将需要成为混合或远程工作的重点。”

Results of an instant conference poll showed that about 51% of GWIC attendee respondents said their workplace now has a hybrid office-home work arrangement, with 39% indicating full-time on site work and 9% mostly working from home. About 32% of attendees said women will fall behind in their careers with new hybrid work models many employers are adopting, though half believed they would thrive in the adapted work environment.

“I formalized working from home for my company,” said Bisa Grant, CEO of Anchor, a California construction management firm. She emphasized that “full engagement is not where you’re working, but that work is getting done,” and urged attendees to “make sure you’re on top of things." Jazleen Aguilar, marketing manager for Colorado mechanical contractor Murphy Co., said women need to “step up” use of work processes “never done before” and not to avoid asking the same kinds of questions when working remotely as they would on site.

Lauren Ruth Martin, a Tennessee-based workplace burnout therapist and owner of Novel Consulting, said the pandemic has “amplified" the need for employee services. “Burnout is an issue of bandwidth” and “can evolve into a diagnosable mental health condition if it goes unaddressed,” she said, urging attendees to adopt the workplace mindset of “humbleswagger,” which she defined as “remaining confident in your strengths while acknowledging that we are all fallible.”

Agility is the Word

即使妇女寻求新的方法来适应不断变化的工作场所，大流行市场的加快速度也在开放新的设计和建筑领域，以证明领导力的潜力。

Greatness Consulting首席执行官Gretchen Gagel分享了她关于使组织“敏捷”的研究 - 可以一次又一次地适应新的条件。她说：“作为领导者，我们需要能够应对业务环境中的变化并领导这一变化。”

Sonia Lopez, a preconstruction executive at contractor DPR, joked that while the firm “didn’t know there was going to be a pandemic … we were working on how to prepare for the next thing,” so it had ramped up hiring in the two years prior. “When this did happen, we already had a team in place and dashboards to show clients how to tackle supply chain,” she said.

In a large organization such as the U.S. General Services Administration, which builds and manages federal government facilities, turning the ship is not that easy, said Julia De Rosi, a deputy assistant commissioner, but new technology enabled a pivot to virtual project inspections. While such agility is a “short-term response” to the pandemic, it also allowed GSA to gain longer-term operational and strategic value. “We are not just workingin这项业务了，我们正在工作在the business,” she said. “It was really transformative for GSA.”

Global beverage giant AB InBev realized that it could be “more agile than we thought we could be and that was really through the empowerment of frontline workers,” said Carolina Pallaro, its global director of engineering and projects execution.

The firm decided to build a permanent 100-bed hospital in Brazil—approved by management in three days leading to a collaboration with a modular contractor and a hospital chain. Built in just 33 days, the project spurred others in Ecuador and Peru, and generated a tool kit for future use. “The challenge for us as construction leaders is how we foster this same sense of purpose in our normal business,” said Pallaro.

Sky's No Longer the Limit

宇航中心主任南希·布雷和集成services for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, pointed to women in high-profile positions in its current and future project execution—including the Artemis program, which will land the first woman and first person of color on the moon.

玛丽亚雷曼,传入美国社会公民Engineers president (second from left), told GWIC attendees that it's important for girls to see themselves developing careers as construction sector professions.
照片：Scott Blair/Enn新利luck

An organizational chart she displayed during an address entitled, “The Sky’s No Longer the Limit,” showed that women now hold half of the spaceport’s 22 leadership roles. They include Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA's first woman launch director, who will oversee countdown and liftoff of the Artemis rocket and spacecraft test flight this year.

布雷说：“我们必须继续鼓励年轻女孩，并使他们对小学时代的年龄感到兴奋。”

Pressure on the Pipeline

Industry veterans outlined the challenges of building the workforce pipeline, offering insights on how to advance careers for next-gen women and men.

工程师GHD的执行官兼美国土木工程师协会主席玛丽亚·雷曼（Maria Lehman）指出，“对于女孩来说，看到自己很重要”，指出70％的女工程师在20年内离开了该领域。她补充说：“没有足够的白人来完成我们需要做的工作。”

Henry Nutt III, a Black former union sheet metal worker wno now is a preconstruction executive at Southland Industries and chair of the Associated General Contractors’ national diversity and inclusion steering committee, said “We have to monitor and enforce change … not to penalize, but to hold [industry] accountable.”

国际砖石学院首席执行官卡琳·哈利法克斯（Caryn Halifax）是瓦工工会训练部门，他强调了尽早促进行业工作作为可行的职业选择的努力，他强调学校辅导员“没有激励将人们推向非传统职业。”她也是ACE导师计划国家董事会成员，该组织为行业前景提供250万美元的年度奖学金。

"We really need to understand that we have to bring everyone to the table early," said Agnes Weber, a TRC Cos. senior vice president with 37 years of experience in public and private sector construction management. "They need to experience good and bad situations. We want people to fail softly. That's how you learn."

Lara Poloni, global president of AECOM and a 30-year industry engineering veteran, emphasized in career anecdotes that the key to leadership impact is as much tied to empathy and trusting one’s instinct. Women often feel they have to be “super-assertive and speak with force,” she said. “I disagree.”

她说，另一个教训是“从'是的。'开始。”当最终在Aecom提供C套件时，Poloni最初被禁止，说她觉得自己还没有准备好。Poloni敦促与会者“说'是的，从那里向后工作，并弄清楚如何使其工作。”

As part of anenvironmental, social and governance strategyannounced last year, AECOM has targeted women to make up at least 20% of its senior leadership and at least 35% of its workforce “near term." The program also ties leadership ESG accountability on projects through annual audits of specific performance targets. “We also take a look every year” at women’s salaries, said Poloni, and “if adjustments are needed, we make them.”

女性的力量戏剧

Emphasizing the strong career potential for AEC trade and technical professionals in dynamic clean energy sectors such as offshore wind and solar power, respectively, Alla Weinstein, founder and CEO of project developers Trident Winds and Castle Winds, and SOLV Energy business development manager Alison Adams updated GWIC attendees on opportunities for talent as the fossil-fuel transition accelerates.

Touting California’s just announced state draft plan for 3 GW of floating offshore wind by 2030, and up to 15 GW by 2045, Weinstein, an industry pioneer, detailed the early challenges she faced to gain any U.S. support. She now has major floating wind energy development projects proposed in California and Washington state.

她说：“您有点不得不超越地平线，才能意识到今天可能不会发生事情，可能需要10年才能看到现实。”

SOLV Energy, formed last year from Swinerton Construction's spinoff of its clean-energy building business, is one of the largest U.S. solar sector constructors. "One thing that I love about this industry is that it’s at the intersection of so many things,” said Adams. Solar is "incredibly flexible, we can put it in lots of places, pretty much anywhere that the sun shines. I think this is one thing that gives so much opportunity for women.”

Infrastructure Investment: Spurring Diversity

The $1.2-trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is an anticipated vehicle to propel solutions and funding to address diversity imbalances in AEC staffing and projects, said Giovanna Brasfield, CEO of Brasfield & Associates, an industry DEI and training consultant.

Rhianna Rogers, a RAND Center policy researcher, questioned whether the law's broadband investment, with a $100-million allotment compared to billions for other infrastructure sectors, needs a boost as a key link to stakeholders, particularly in environmental justice communities.

With the administration’s focus on underserved communities, new funding will uniquely position AEC firms to monitor and improve how public works projects impact them, said Bridget Ssamula, a senior director of AECOM, pointing to integration of qualitative geodata into project planning. Tracking project performance through quantifiable metrics to create accountability can lead to meaningful change in underserved communities, she said.

“Firms can use data to pinpoint exactly how a project will impact a surrounding area and add human equity back in,” said Ssamula.

“These are the places, when we are talking about climate risk and climate impacts, that bear the brunt of these decisions,” said Allison Brooks, executive director of the Bay Area Regional Collaborative (BARC), a group of seven San Francisco Bay Area government agencies.

纽约州皇后区的约翰·肯尼迪国际机场的数十亿美元扩展和8号航站楼的升级，刺激了所有者美国航空公司和主要承包商Holt Construction，以定制扩展外展计划，以提高少数民族和妇女和妇女和妇女和妇女和妇女和企业的参与，以及当地公司。霍尔特董事亚历山大·佩罗蒂（Alexandria Perotti）表示，其中包括为没有通过资格障碍的公司的指导，以改善未来的选择。

Often, diversity efforts are perfunctory, where “you put up a flyer,” said Oby Chiapa, operations manager with Group PMX, which assisted in the effort.

美国项目经理Asmita Gharat表示，该过程导致参与了200多家新公司，125个分包合同以及225次指导会议在两年内向5500名参与者提供了，超过了分包目标。

Industry's Emerging Arenas

Attendees also gained insights on the unique legal and cultural nuances of project development on Indian-owned lands, as tribes, with more than 600 federally recognized, seeking to expand revenue potential. More government-backed projects also are eyed by the administration, with significant new federal funding earmarked for infrastructure and community improvement.

“Tribes want you to do your homework before you start working with them,” said Pilar Thomas, a partner at law firm Quarles & Brady and a former Indian affairs official in the U.S. Interior and Energy Depts. While she termed gaming-related development on indigenous lands “an anchor of economic and infrastructure development for tribes” since a 1988 federal law enabled it, Thomas pointed to the added complexity of project and contract approval because of tribes’ sovereign status.

Tahda Ahtone, an attorney and Arizona-based developer on tribal lands, added that while tribal lands have key tax exemptions, she urged industry professionals to clearly understand the intricacies of land ownership

“Tribes are not low-hanging fruit,” said Kari McCormick, client services director at Wenaha Group, a development consultant and PM for indigenous projects. She pointed to needed inclusion of tribal member workforce preferences that will “ build community after you’re gone.” Such outreach can offer “rewards tenfold” in building longer-term project relationships.

纽沙·阿贾米（Newsha Ajami）表示，随着气候变化的影响加剧，下一代行业人才对于开发和实施解决方案至关重要，尤其是面对干旱条件扩大的改造和重新构想的水基础设施，这是地球上地球上的首席研究员Newsha Ajami说，面对干旱条件扩大。劳伦斯·伯克利国家实验室的环境科学。

“我们生活在infrastruc的后果ture built 100 years ago, a top down rigid system," she told the GWIC audience. "We have to rethink our model and extend our idea of what infrastructure is. We design for certainty and nature is very uncertain."

贾米德强调,“我们需要a lot of diverse ideas at the table," noting that "60% of the world's cities have not yet been built."