EMPOWERING WOMEN IN CONSTRUCTION

WomenBuild kicks off its third year with a Spring Mix-N-Mingle

By Daniela Cohen

According to the 2020 Labour Force survey, women make up only 16 per cent of the construction industry in Alberta. In 2019, Caroline Bowen, director of membership engagement at the Edmonton Construction Association (ECA), and the only woman on the leadership team, started receiving calls asking if the association was doing anything for women in the industry. Cautious about creating this type of separation between women and men in construction, Bowen hesitated to act. But the response to a golf gathering she hosted a short time later with 40 women friends in the industry caused her to reconsider.

“I’m not kidding you, I probably got 38 messages the next day just saying, ‘That was incredible.’ ‘I got a job out of this.’ Not a new role, somebody got hired to do some stucco for another company. It was just amazing!” said Bowen. “And they were like, ‘When are you doing your next event?’ It honestly just gained momentum from there.”

Together with three other women, Bowen created a leadership team and a plan for what is now WomenBuild, a platform she says is designed to “inspire, motivate, and connect” women in the construction industry.

WomenBuild hosts three events per year: a spring speaker series with senior leaders in the industry, a summer golf tournament, and a fall speaker series that includes a panel discussion followed by a mix and mingle. Over the last few years, WomenBuild’s email list has grown to 400, and its events have been consistently sold out.

This year, the kickoff event was the Spring Mix-N-Mingle held at the Greenhouse Restaurant at the Victoria Golf Course on April 12.

Carolyn Aumiller, project manager team lead at Pagnotta, goes to ECA events whenever possible. She has been working in the construction industry for over 10 years and is part of the Edmonton Construction Association (ECA) Young Builders Group (YBG). Joining WomenBuild to network was a natural step for her and the aspect she most enjoyed at the Spring Mix-N-Mingle was meeting many new women among the 90 attendees.

“It’s easier to network when it’s just women in the room and [there’s] that kind of camaraderie,” said Aumiller. “A lot of women in construction find those larger events intimidating. You’re walking into a room that’s 80 to 85 per cent male who all know each other. It’s awkward. Especially for newer women in construction and women that just aren’t as confident interacting with men in the industry, WomenBuild is a great opportunity to come out and be more at ease with talking to people.”

Aumiller said she spoke with one woman who shared that she never went to these kinds of events, but came to this one.

“She was so intimidated, even scared, to come to this because she’s very introverted and doesn’t like talking to people. But she’s an executive at a company and she’s like, ‘I need to get out and start doing this more,’” said Aumiller. “So, it was great to talk to her and [help] make her at ease [by saying], ‘No, this is a great space for you to come, and come to more of these, but [also] come to the other events. Now that you know a bunch of these women, a lot of these women go to the other bigger events.”

Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Falynn Schellenberg comes from a family who owned a paving and civil/industrial construction business. While pursuing her business degree at MacEwan University in Edmonton, she met her husband and ended up staying. In 2016, they bought St. Albert Parking Lot Maintenance Ltd. (SAPLM), now a civil general contracting company specializing in asphalt-related construction, where Schellenberg’s husband had started out as a labourer. In 2021, they acquired Rody Contracting Ltd., a civil earthworks company specializing in electrical trenching which serves Alberta’s construction market.

“My dad always said that networking has such a key role in construction…. So, being a part of associations is a very important way to maintain relevance to the industry, be competitive, stay on board with all of the current standards and information,” said Schellenberg. “But a big part of it, especially being business owners, is the networking side and relationship building. Even if it’s with competitors, there’s really nothing that you cannot benefit from with being a part of the association.”

After the pandemic and once their kids were a bit older, Schellenberg and her husband got more involved in the ECA, and she decided to attend some WomenBuild events.

“You can meet various women in different construction roles, not just necessarily in administrative roles, [and] you can either be in the same position where they’re a first timer or meet somebody who’s been around the association for a long time,” said Schellenberg. “And then when you do go to other ECA events outside of WomenBuild, there’s a familiar face.”

For Schellenberg, WomenBuild has been a valuable opportunity to connect with other women in leadership positions.

“It is a different perspective to be at an ownership level, management level, or leadership level in construction being a female and trying to maintain your presence and relevance in a room when you don’t know as many people and a lot of times being male dominated. So, collaborating with those people and seeing what works for them can be very beneficial,” she said.

Bowen said WomenBuild’s impact on participants has brought her to tears a few times.

For example, in the fall series last year, a speaker shared a story about a 36-year-old woman engineer for a large corporation coming into her office in tears to say she was pregnant.

“Personally, she was thrilled, of course,” said Bowen. “Well, in a professional way, she was devastated because she was in the middle of this massive project… And they were also struggling to get pregnant, and she got pregnant during this project.” Bowen said that while men don’t even think about these things, this is a dilemma many women attending the event could relate to.

“But then what the panelist was saying was, we’re scared to say those words that ‘I’m pregnant’ or ‘I’m stressed’, or whatever it is, but the men in the office actually want to learn more from us as well,” said Bowen. “They want us to communicate, they want us to feel comfortable with them as well.”

In another instance, women spoke about outhouses on construction sites having no toilet seats, and through the conversation, realized that this wasn’t the case at all sites. They were then able to share this with their respective companies.

“There were three companies that went out and checked every single outhouse that they had on site, because they did not realize that there were no toilet seats on some of them,” said Bowen, adding that the companies subsequently installed those toilet seats.

In the future, Bowen would like to see a woman from each of the ECA’s 1,000 member agencies represented in WomenBuild. She would also like to hold another three or four events each year, and in a few years, a learning retreat, where women can broaden their horizons and add to their toolkits.

“A lot of member firms are now sending their young women to WomenBuild events because they’re saying, ‘You need to connect with other women in the industry. You need to grow your network of women’,” said Bowen. u