The Portland chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction will hold its annual Night with NAWIC fundraiser from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, March 9, at the Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W. Burnside St., Portland.

The event, which has been held for 15 years, will feature the band Hit Machine, a raffle and a silent auction. NAWIC Portland chapter president Amy Nemetz said this is the first time since 2019 that the event will be held in person. The event was previously called Brewfest. Nemetz said the group receives great donations from community partners for the auction.

“The proceeds for the auction and for the fundraiser as a whole go toward a lot of our community events that the NAWIC chapter supports,” Nemetz said.

The Portland chapter also offers several scholarships during the year, as well as participating in community service events such as sponsoring a house with Rebuilding Together Portland every year.

NAWIC has worked with Rebuilding Together for five years. Rebuilding Together is a nationwide nonprofit organization that provides critical home repairs, modifications and improvements for low-income homeowners. NAWIC sponsors a home that Rebuilding Together selects.

NAWIC also supports several events conducted by the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington, particularly their STEM and career day event.

NAWIC created an organization called NAWIC Founders’ Scholarship Foundation, which assists in providing the construction industry with trained employees through higher education. It is a scholarship fund that is offered for chapters to administer college or trade school scholarships. Nemetz said those scholarships are awarded in the spring every year.

“Typically, our chapter does a $1,000 scholarship in each of those categories,” Nemetz said.

This year, the Portland chapter is also offering funds to the Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. to assist with their graduates, material and supply needs for their program. That scholarship amount is not yet set.

The auction coincides with Women in Construction Week, a national celebration, held March 5-11. This is the 25th anniversary of the celebration. NAWIC offers an opportunity for those in the larger construction community to see some of the achievements for women in construction and discover what learning opportunities and network events are available. NAWIC will hold jobsite tours, specifically hosted by some of their member companies.

Nemetz said the chapter has a new event this year. They are partnering with Dovetail Workwear, a Portland-based company that sells workwear specifically for women. The company will host a trunk show and happy hour March 8.

Most events are free and open to the public. 91��Ƶ can be found at and on the chapter’s .

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The National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) is presenting Women in Construction Week to spotlight women as a critical component of success in the industry.

Women comprise only 10.9 percent of the industry’s workforce, but NAWIC wants to change that. The group started its annual event in 1998 in order to raise awareness of industry opportunities for women as well as celebrate those already taking advantage. The week was originally held in September but then moved to March – Women’s History Month.

“There are women working in construction 365 days a year, but we are bringing some extra presence to the women in construction this week,” NAWIC President Anne Pfleger said.

In the past, Women in Construction Week included large, in-person fundraising events. But the COVID-19 pandemic altered plans for 2021, Pfleger said. This year’s theme is “connect, collaborate and construct,” she said. This is the first time, she added, that members of chapters across the country are able to join other celebrations since they are all virtual.

NAWIC’s Portland chapter on Friday, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., will host a virtual panel discussion on diversity and inclusion in the construction industry with participants from JE Dunn Construction, Turner Construction and CRESA. Visit to learn more.

Also, virtual jobsite tours and volunteerism events are taking place throughout the week. On Saturday, the chapter will conclude the week with deliveries of food boxes for the Black Resilience Fund.

One goal for the week, said Stacey Lin, the Portland chapter’s WIC Week committee chairwoman and recording secretary, is to “emphasize the growing role of women in the industry.”

NAWIC’s Salem chapter is hosting a “Shed Build” event for families whose properties were affected by the 2020 wildfires. The sheds will provide places for victims of the wildfires to store food, belongings and tools while they live out of trailers and rebuild their homes, said Juli Foscoli, the chapter’s secretary.

Women who enter construction “are really pushed down by the men at the beginning,” Foscoli said. “Though it usually improves, as their worth as workers is recognized, it’s important for women to connect to a support system or tribe.”

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When Vy Duong, an assistant field engineer with Turner Construction, was asked whether she would like to spearhead a Women in Construction Week event, she eagerly accepted.

Duong received a degree in civil engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in 2018, and then joined Turner Construction’s Portland office a year ago as an assistant engineer. She learned about the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) and its annual weeklong celebration around the same time.

“I found out about NAWIC through some of my colleagues in the organization,” she said. “And after that they were like, ‘Hey, you’re on a cool project; do you want to lead this tour?’ So I said, ‘Yes, that sounds good.’”

The “cool project” is the expansion of Adidas‘ North American headquarters in Portland’s Overlook neighborhood. There, two mass-timber buildings are being constructed along North Greeley Avenue.

On Wednesday, a group of around 15 women working in construction in the Portland area, and a few men too, joined Duong and others with Turner Construction at the Adidas campus.

“People sometimes ask me why I decided to join Turner,” Duong said. “And I think what makes me the most excited about Turner is that they support things like this. It’s been nothing but support.”

The larger north building – with a hybrid structural system of precast concrete columns, heavy timber beams and cross-laminated timber panels – will be five stories and hold mostly office space, while the smaller south building – all heavy timber – will be three stories and provide amenities for Adidas employees.

“I think there’s a significant desire right now in the Pacific Northwest to utilize wood in structures,” said Colin Foster, a Turner Construction superintendent working on the south building. “I think it derived from the client, Adidas, saying we want to utilize resources from the Pacific Northwest in our new construction. So the design team’s challenge was: How do we do that? And we arrived at this.”

Crews led by general contractor Turner Construction installed the final glulam beams and cross-laminated timber panels a little over a month ago. LEVER Architecture designed the buildings, KPFF Consulting Engineers performed structural engineering, and Interface Engineering handled mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

Even some mass-plywood panels 12 feet wide by 48 feet long now cover an existing soccer field that is being used to host subcontractor job trailers, materials and deliveries. Sheets of plywood were laminated together to form a much larger piece of lumber.

“We laid this down to protect the existing waterproofing,” said Andy Kavanaugh, a senior superintendent with Turner Construction. “There are two inches of Styrofoam and these are two inches thick. We put this in last April and it’s almost been a year and it’s held up pretty well out in the weather with no protection.”

The south building is being constructed an existing three-level parking garage below grade. Over three months of work was required to prepare the integration of the garage with the new building. This included reinforcement and thickening of existing columns, as well as driving 28 micropiles and pouring new footings for each of them.

“We poured new, huge footings on these piles and we took two-foot-diameter concrete columns that were there and we made them basically four feet with shotcrete and rebar cages all the way up,” Foster said. “So these columns (in each new building) land directly on the columns down in the garage.”

A grand staircase dominates the entrance and lobby for the north building. It has three-ply CLT panels, unlike the five-ply panels in the south building. Also, the south building uses a structural steel building core with buckling restraint bracing for seismic resilience. The north building, meanwhile, uses precast concrete girders and beams for structural support, along with glulam beams and cross-laminated timber panels.

Over 700 CLT panels were used on the north building, Kavanaugh said.

“Typically we’d take four loads a day,” he said. “They were stacked four to a truck. We had the glulams attached at the factory, so they all came out like a stack of Legos.”

A Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating is being sought for the project. The team is looking to deliver the south building in May and the north building in October.

“That’s definitely one of the highest priorities of Adidas,” Duong said. “They told us that on time and on schedule and under budget is good, but if you don’t get LEED, then this project is a failure.”

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The ratio of men to women in the construction industry isn’t a mystery.

The most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey shows that in 2018 women comprised roughly 9.1 percent of the construction workforce. More notably, only 3.4 percent of skilled tradespeople in 2018 were women. In 1999, the same survey was compiled differently but showed that 2.6 percent of skilled tradespeople were women. It’s a small difference.

This week, the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) has been looking into why women aren’t making greater strides in the industry. Hundreds of NAWIC chapters are holding events during the annual Women in Construction Week. The goal is to bring together women to celebrate professional achievements and determine new ways to recruit more into the industry.

This year, the 91��Ƶ spoke with a number of industry figures about the prospects for transforming the culture of construction to more fully embrace women.

“I’m never one of the mindset that says ‘No, it can’t be done,” said Liz Cowen, president of NAWIC’s Portland chapter, which was established in 1961. “It’s just not going to happen overnight. It is about making improvements for sure, and a lot of it has to do with not just things that are women-related.”

From the now-constant shortage of skilled workers to ongoing jobsite culture issues, the reasons themselves are largely recognized. But redirecting recruitment and educational efforts are just the start. Women also have to want to work in construction, and that is probably a larger challenge.

“I just would say that by not figuring out how to make the industry work for women we’re missing out on half the talent pool right out of the gate,” said Elizabeth Rinehart, a vice president and general manager in Walsh Construction‘s Seattle office. “You think ‘what a silly way to start out.’”

Some firms, however, are looking to set an example.

Neil Kelly Co. is a bit of an outlier and proud of it. Even in progressive Portland, the design-build remodeling firm stands out with its large number of women in positions such as designer and carpenter. The firm, which operates largely in the residential sector, relies on women to facilitate business relationships.

“My dad and my family tend to be more open-minded and progressive, and it relates to what we do, which is residential remodeling,” said Tom Kelly, the firm’s president and son of founder Neil Kelly. “Women are the deciders on the client side, so having a woman designer deal with a woman just fits the client’s needs.”

By employing women in customer-facing positions in design and the skilled trades, the firm inspired trust in those decision-makers and inspired them to tell their neighbors.

“With women, I can’t tell you how many times they’ve told me, ‘We’re so glad we have a female carpenter in the house.’” said journey-level carpenter Jeanette Wagner, who has worked for Neil Kelly Co. for 29 years. “They’re grateful and it gives a higher level of comfort.”

According to the company’s own numbers, women currently comprise 33 percent of IT staff, 73 percent of design, build and sales staff; 67 percent of accounting staff, 50 percent of marketing staff and 100 percent of both administration and human resources personnel.

“It’s a slow crawl,” said Michelle Rolens, a senior designer who has worked for the firm for over 25 years. “But there are far more than there used to be.”

Despite Neil Kelly Co.’s achievements in the residential sector, some question whether anything similar can be achieved on the commercial side.

Cowen, who works as an estimating coordinator for Goodfellow Bros., thinks the leadership and communication aspect of the Neil Kelly Co. experience could potentially translate.

“Recognizing and valuing the leadership styles of both men and women would be a huge stepping-stone in that,” she said. “Women have a more collaborative and diplomatic approach to leadership, and we can facilitate positive changes in the industry.”

Rinehart and others agree.

“I think that women are inherently good at things like multitasking and communicating and problem-solving in a proactive, professional way,” Rinehart said. “Men can be too, but in construction it’s one of the last industries that has a lot of holdover traits that aren’t always seen as collaborative.”

Walsh Construction project manager Meghan Herteg is in charge of Home Forward‘s Grand Avenue Apartments affordable housing project in Northeast Portland. Herteg, who earned a degree in architecture before switching to construction management, said the field of architecture could possibly be a catalyst for desired changes in the industry.

“When I was getting my degree, a third of the class was female,” she said. “The other piece of that is more recently I’ve talked to architecture students, and it’s about 50-50 – so even in the last decade it’s changed and there are more women going into architecture than ever.”

Federal statistics bear this out. In 1999, slightly more than 14 percent of architects were women. By 2018, that figure had risen to 29.7 percent.

By contrast, 2018 figures show that just 7.7 percent of construction managers were women, up from 5.9 percent in 2003.

Many observers remain optimistic about the potential to grow those numbers.

“There are a lot of similarities between residential and commercial,” said Afton Walsh, a senior project manager with Walsh Construction. “In the work we do, we found, especially in the last 10 years, a lot of our clients are also women, as well as a lot of the designers we work with.”

Walsh said there are practical reasons – primarily family and children – that make recruitment of women more difficult.

“Construction is not a very flexible job,” she said. “So that’s part of it, to train that maybe we need more flexibility.”

Kay Ewalt, president of NAWIC’s Eugene chapter and an inspector for FEI in Eugene, believes an unapologetic approach is needed.

“If we really want to empower women and prove they can work in the field, we have to quit coddling the women who don’t belong,” she said. “This goes across the board, male or female, but we are coddling our younger generation.”

The inherent demands of the industry place women at a disadvantage, Ewalt said. But in the end the purpose of her work with NAWIC is to provide options.

“The whole point of the industry is to get the education out there, whether it’s males or females,” she said. “We’ve come so far, really. We just need to get the word out that the construction industry is ready for women.”

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To celebrate Women in Construction Week this year, a local group has planned something old and something new.

The designated week of March 5-11 is designed to call national attention to the wide range of roles that women play in the world of construction, from tradeswomen and project managers to estimators and lawyers. But some industry groups also see the week as a way to educate others about how construction can offer high-paying, professionally fulfilling careers.

The latter goal is at the heart of several of the events planned by the Portland chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction.

Portland-area students at St. Mary’s Academy and Lincoln High School, for example, will learn about construction career opportunities during panel discussions to be held Monday and Tuesday. The women on the panels all work in the local industry, but they represent more than just traditional industry roles, according to Kelly Aust, a Skanska project manager and NAWIC Portland chapter president.

“We have a chief operating engineer, a construction lawyer, a structural engineer,” she said. “People think about construction and if you’re not in the industry, it … looks like you finish a building and that’s all there is to it. But there’s really a lot of diversity. There are a lot of professional career paths that intersect with the construction industry.”

On Thursday, Skanska will open up the world of construction to the public by offering a tour of the Porter Hotel job site, a visit that will include a look at how virtual reality is helping shape projects in Portland. The tour is open to the public, though advance registration is required, Aust said. Anyone interested in attending can contact her at kelly.aust@skanska.com or visit the NAWIC chapter’s website at .

While the panel discussions and project tour are new events for Women in Construction Week, the Portland chapter also will return to tradition by holding a clothing drive for Dress for Success Oregon, a nonprofit that helps women achieve economic independence by providing business attire and professional development.

This is the sixth consecutive year the chapter has held the drive, Aust said. The chapter will accept donations of nearly new women’s professional attire, shoes and accessories at each of its events this week, as well as at the chapter’s monthly meeting on March 16.

This year the Daily Journal of Commerce will support the chapter’s drive by serving as a drop-off point for donations as well. Donations can be dropped off from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, at the 91��Ƶ office at 921 S.W. Washington St., suite 210, in downtown Portland.

Further south, the NAWIC chapter in Salem will celebrate women in construction with a Wednesday luncheon featuring guest speaker Susan Wooley of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Meanwhile, the members of the Eugene NAWIC chapter will hold a Wednesday tour of the newly remodeled Eugene Airport, followed by a Friday evening event at Elkhorn Brewery, 686 E. Broadway in Eugene. For more information about the events in the Eugene area, visit the NAWIC Chapter #77 website at .

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