Reflecting on Women in Construction Week 2021

By Christine Prevolos, Senior Marketing Coordinator

Women in Construction Week is March 7th to 13th, 2021. When many people think of construction, they think of modern buildings, big cranes, dust and dirt, and loud noises. I think of New York, history, and art. I think of the bronze writer’s row on the mall in Central Park, the beautiful tile installation at Bethesda Terrace, and building unexpected friendships.

The path to my experiences in construction began during my graduate program at the University of Vermont, in Historic Preservation. In the midst of studying historic architecture and urban planning, I landed a summer internship as a seasonal conservator for the Central Park Conservancy (CPC).

You may be asking: “art conservation and construction, how much could those possibly be related?” A lot. During my summer with the CPC, I operated a boom lift on a daily basis. I scaled statues and monuments wearing a hard hat and heavy harness. I drove a big truck, opened and closed water hydrants, used power washers and industrial hoses, practiced bronze casting and the chemical patina process, and wielded a blowtorch. I flirted with welding and even tried to learn how to play dominoes with our facilities crew...I would say of all things, I was least successful at the dominoes.

As I learned, taking care of one of the world’s most visited art collections in one of our most significant public parks is a lot of hard work. Our job site was entirely outside, with plenty of opportunities to be burned, scrapped, bruised, too hot, too cold, too wet, or just too tired. There was no telling what to expect day to day, as we were responsible for maintenance and conservation as well as disaster control. One day, we were re-patina-ing Shakespeare; the next we were head-to-toe in Tyvek suits salvaging hundreds of historic ceramic tiles from a waterlogged shed. Other responsibilities included unofficial tour guide, direction-giver, emergency responder, and skateboard and graffiti manager. All in all, I learned to be ready for anything.

In the beginning, I was quite certain that not many of the long-time CPC facilities staff expected much from me. At 5’3, with zero construction experience, and as a woman, it seemed like most people I encountered simply expected me to do “the best that I could,” write a paper about it, and go back to school and never look back. Construction remains a male-dominated field; in 2018, just 10% of construction industry workers were women—this amounts to more than 1.1 million people, making up 1.5% of the US workforce overall. To me, these expectations (or lack thereof ) posed a challenge, and my direct supervisors were happy to give me the tools, guidance, and opportunities to excel. (thanks, Matt R. and John H.!).

A few years later, I took a job in San Francisco as an architectural conservator. Once again, I was on top of high buildings, getting dirty in leftover construction materials in old basements, climbing ladders against the sides of churches to inspect glass, and assessing historic sandstone at places like Stanford University. It was here that an opportunity to take on a larger role in marketing and business development arose, which led me down the path to AEC marketing.

Each day as a person in construction, I built, I fixed, I cleaned, I created, and all the things I touched were better because I had worked on them. I grew increasingly aware of my power to learn and problem-solve. When it’s 95 degrees out, wearing a head-to-toe plastic Tyvek suit, blowtorching a bronze statue, on top of a ladder, while your colleague is poised right next to you with a paint brush covered in a dangerous chemical solution–the job becomes much more than just the task at hand. You must constantly gauge the realities of what needs to be done and what can go wrong in the process. You are always emotionally invested in the safety of yourself, your co-workers, and everyone around you.

Not only do you bear the burden of caring for amazing things and performing physically difficult tasks but—as a woman in a male-dominated industry—you also understand that the impact of your role and your decisions goes far beyond work performance. I took that seriously and, while I received great recognition in both my roles in construction, I was and am most excited for what that means for women who may apply to those roles after me. Perhaps those doors are just a little more open than they were before.

These experiences and the lessons-learned made it easy for me to find a home at Sam Schwartz—a firm that strives to make our built environment better for all through thoughtful planning. It’s a place founded in the belief that we are responsible for more than pieces of infrastructure, but what those things provide: a sense of place, safety, and just and equitable access. I have always been a person who hopes to leave things a little better than I found them; I am proud to have done that in construction (hopefully having paved a way for more women to do it!) and aim to continue to do it here at Sam Schwartz and wherever else my journey may take me.