April Chang played a major role in SFO Harvey Milk Terminal 1 BAB becoming the world's 1st LEED Gold and WELL Core Platinum-certified airport terminal.
Sunday, March 5 kicked off the first day of 2023's Women in Construction Week--a week dedicated to celebrating women as indispensable members of the construction industry. Monday through Friday, we'll be highlighting the experiences, challenges, and accomplishments of five outstanding women from various Webcor teams.
April Chang-LEED AP, WELL AP, TRUE Advisor, DBIA Professional, Envision Sustainable Professional. For April, assistant design manager, these highly regarded industry certifications aren't just a testament to her exceptional sustainability and design-build expertise, but necessary tools to help distinguish her as a knowledgeable professional in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry.
"Despite my years of relevant experience, industry certifications, and educational background (BA in Architecture and MS in Construction Management), I've continued to experience issues with people hearing me, seeing me, and taking me seriously in professional settings," April says. "It's part of the reason I've prioritized earning so many certifications-it helps establish some level of confidence with new people I meet in the workplace. Between being a woman and looking as young as I do, I expect this will continue to be an issue for me with any new group I'm a part of. I'll just need to continue to prove myself as someone who brings value to a team/project."
Since joining the SFO Harvey Milk Terminal 1 Boarding Area B (BAB) project as a project manager with Austin Commercial (prior to transitioning to Webcor), April's done exactly that. She went on to manage the LAX Terminal Core project and the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) project in Phoenix, AZ before moving back to Los Angeles to join Webcor, a company with which she was already familiar thanks to her time on Harvey Milk T1- an Austin-Webcor JV project.
"I worked closely with Project Director, Design Wayne Campbell while managing the BAB project on Austin's side, so I was somewhat familiar with Webcor's culture and people prior to making the transition," she says. "Since moving over to Webcor, Wayne and I have been discussing a new role that integrates traditional project manager responsibilities with those of a design manager, given my educational background in architecture."
April's design and sustainability expertise played a major role in BAB becoming the first airport terminal in the world to achieve LEED Platinum and WELL Core (Platinum) certification last year. To date, her role managing the project's ambitious sustainability goals has been the highlight of her career. "As someone who was behind BAB's sustainability efforts, seeing the project earn the honor of being named the world's first LEED Platinum and WELL Core Platinum-certified airport terminal was pretty amazing," she says. "That entire project was a great experience; checking the punch list items and ensuring all the key items were ready for the first flights landing in the BAB terminal was also spectacular. I was probably running around for 24 hours straight, but the expressions on the passengers' faces when they landed were worth it."
In the nearly full year that's passed since she joined Webcor in spring 2022, April's continued to challenge herself and chase every learning opportunity offered to her. She's gotten involved with the pursuit side of the business, engaged in continuing education presentations with the design management and façade management groups, and engaged in valuable discussions with design managers both within and outside Webcor at last month's design management symposium in our San Francisco King Street office. "It was great to see some movement on how we can grow in this integrated role of ours," she says.
As she approaches her second year at Webcor, April looks forward to tackling more professional challenges that will propel her growth as an AEC leader in the design management and sustainability space. She's prepared to take on the challenges ahead-from the knowledge and experience required to get there to the less-discussed issues like advocating for yourself as a young woman in a clearly male-dominated space.
"One of the most valuable lessons I've learned during my time in this industry is that you absolutely must speak up for yourself," she says. "You need to learn to be your own advocate for the things you want and believe you deserve. Communication skills in general are also key, including properly adjusting your communication style as needed to suit your audience.
"I've learned so much and come a long way since starting out with Austin in 2015, but I'm definitely still learning and have plenty of room to improve!"
Few people at Webcor exemplify our "Bold" core value the way Catherine Joslin has consistently done since the day she joined Webcor.
Sunday, March 5 kicked off the first day of 2023's Women in Construction Week--a week dedicated to celebrating women as indispensable members of the construction industry. Today through Friday, we'll be highlighting the experiences, challenges, and accomplishments of five outstanding women from various Webcor teams.
Few people at Webcor exemplify our "Bold" core value the way Catherine Joslin, assistant superintendent with Webcor Concrete (WCG), has consistently done since the day she joined Webcor in January 2017. After a year and a half on the project management route with Shimmick Construction, Catherine knew she was ready for a major career change-ideally far away from the office and right in the middle of the field.
"In late 2016, I got a call out of the blue from Webcor Concrete inviting me to interview," she says. "My buddy from college, Matt Miller (current Webcor Craft superintendent), had been a project engineer (PE) for a while, loved it, and referred me without telling me. We had kept in touch, and he knew I was unhappy at my old job."
The rest, as they say, was history. For her first project, Catherine was assigned to SFO's Harvey Milk Terminal 1 Boarding Area B project as a Webcor Concrete project engineer. Immediately, she felt a sense of belonging and passion for the work that she'd sorely lacked as an office PE at Shimmick. Despite still being a somewhat recent college graduate and new to the company, Catherine was quickly trusted as a critical member of the team who would work just as hard as everyone else to deliver the best results possible. Fueled by the infectious energy and determination of her teammates to get the job done right regardless of the time commitment-sometimes 20-hour days-she spent those first couple years on the BAB project soaking up all the knowledge she could about the craft world and what it would take to eventually become a Webcor Concrete superintendent.
Catherine's come a long way since that January day, now more than six years ago. She's now one of Webcor's top subject matter experts (SMEs) in Revit-a 3D software WCG uses to model projects and create 2D shop drawings for the field-and the assigned superintendent for the Building 610 concrete scope at the SFPUC Biosolids Digester Facilities Project (BDFP). She also played a critical role in launching Webcor Timber, Webcor Craft's newest self-perform division, and is currently preplanning the mass timber portion of Webcor Timber's 828 Brannan project. The journey to this point has been far from easy, but Catherine wouldn't have it any other way.
"The beaming sense of pride that comes with building something massive and beautiful, especially knowing all the tireless work that went into delivering it, is one of the most rewarding parts of this job," Catherine says. "I've also loved getting to solve problems on the fly and developing meaningful relationships with Webcor Craft workers."
Her teammates were a constant source of support during one of the toughest challenges of her life, she shares. In 2019, Catherine injured her spine, resulting in a loss of feeling and muscle control in her left leg. After undergoing emergency spine surgery, she was left with a limp in her leg that she was worried would prevent her from ever walking normally again-or from walking on rebar again.
"I had to wear a leg brace for two years," she says. "I was afraid my injury would keep me from doing my job properly, but thankfully, I had an extremely supportive team that helped me through it.
"The experience definitely reinforced the need for a safely set-up job site. Now, my rule is that if I can't navigate it with my wonky leg, it's not safe enough. Unfortunately, this chronic spine injury is keeping me from doing my proper tour of bags-on duty, which is a constant source of disappointment."
Despite the trying challenges (both expected and unexpected) thrown her way, however, Catherine has always refused to back down. She knows she's finally right where she belongs, and she's hungry for more growth, more knowledge, and more lessons learned in the field as she prepares to become the first woman to hold an official superintendent title in Webcor Concrete.
Alan Luna, James Bicamumpaka, Kathleen Lassle, and Toby Bender represented Webcor at SJSU's 2023 Science Extravaganza.
By James Bicamumpaka, Webcor Sr. Project Engineer
Assistant Project Engineer Alan Luna, Sr. Project Engineer James Bicamumpaka, Sr. Compliance Manager Kathleen Lassle, and Sr. Superintendent Toby Bender represented Webcor at the all-day Science Extravaganza held at San Jose State University on Saturday, Feb. 11. The event was organized by MAES Latinos in Engineering and Science, an organization focused on expanding opportunities for Latinx students and professionals in the fields of science and engineering. Each year, MAES organizes the Science Extravaganza, an event that exposes middle school students from the South Bay to career possibilities in the world of science and engineering.
More than 300 students from various South Bay middle schools and 10 companies including Webcor, Meta, NASA, Intuitive, and Genentech attended this year's Science Extravaganza. SJSU Dean of Engineering Sheryl Ehrman kicked off the day with a keynote speech discussing AI, its benefits, and how people can help chatbots improve the breadth of information they share by contributing to knowledge systems, especially areas about which little is known. After her speech, the students rotated between the workshop/activity stations hosted by participating companies.
Webcor's workshop featured a ladder toss game, an activity that was unanimously approved by Webcor's San Jose Community Engagement Committee during the event's planning process, which started in Q4 of 2022. For this fun and engaging workshop, teams of 4-5 students were required to:
This workshop required participating students to communicate clearly, pay attention to detail, follow a plan correctly, collaborate effectively with their teammates, and aim well when playing the game. The boxes contained not only the material necessary to construct the 1" diameter ladder toss game but also 1.5" diameter pieces and connection angles to complicate the activity a bit. If a team realized at the assembly area that they did not have the correct materials, they had to return all their material to the material sourcing area and start procuring a new set of materials before moving to the assembly area to construct the ladder toss frame.
Each student team greatly enjoyed the game and demonstrated excellent collaboration-first when reading the plans in detail, then when sourcing the correct material needed to build the frames. Students' laughter filled the room during the ladder toss game as their aim and throwing strategies were tested when trying to get the balls hanging on the horizontal frame members. (It was not easy when tossing the balls from 25 feet away.)
Before beginning the workshop activity, students learned about the Webcor team and the work each Webcor volunteer does on a regular basis. At the end of each workshop, the students also asked us any questions they had and shared their key lessons learned from the workshop, which many students mentioned were "working together" and "the importance of following a plan".
One of the day's highlights took place when Toby gave wholesome fatherly advice to a group of middle schoolers on pursuing their aspirations and staying focused on all that they put their hearts and minds to.
