Hamza Shallwani, who's working at the Bay Meadows Station 5 project with Webcor Concrete, is back with a new short film recognizing the heroes of our trade.
In addition to his project management talents, Webcor Assistant Project Manager Hamza Ali Shallwani is a skilled filmmaker. His first film, "Behind the Site," documented work at San Francisco International Airport's Grand Hyatt Project; it was selected for screening at the 2019 San Francisco Independent Short Film Festival.
Now Hamza, working at the Bay Meadows Station 5 project with Webcor Concrete, is back with a new short film recognizing the heroes of our trade.
"I created this film to show my appreciation for Webcor Concrete's talented craftspeople; to give them something they can share with their families and children at home to celebrate their skills and convey the inspiring nature of the work they do every day," Hamza says.
Hamza produced, directed, and edited the video on his own using his Panasonic Lumix GH5 during the L2 Area A Vertical Day 2 pour on February 25. (In above photo, foremen preview the video during a 6:30 a.m. huddle.)
Visit Hamza's website for more information on his filmmaking.
To wrap up Women in Construction Week, we are sharing the second article in Webcor's continuing series, "Ask a Woman of Webcor."
To wrap up Women in Construction Week, we are sharing the second article in Webcor's continuing series, "Ask a Woman of Webcor." Today's question: What was the most difficult scope item you've had to coordinate and build?
Graciela is currently closing out the Living on Vine Project in Los Angeles, also known as the Four Seasons Residences.
"The most difficult scope I coordinated was the doors, frames, and hardware (DFH) at the San Bernardino Justice Center (SBJC). I had never managed DFH before and it seemed straightforward at first. As I dug into the task, I realized that there were so many aspects to coordinate. The SBJC had several wall types for both detention and non-detention facilities. The hardware consultant failed to coordinate the security system with the detention doors, so I had to sort through all the scenarios and figure out which doors required the security redesign. To add to the difficulty, we had unrealistic expectations about the "just in time" delivery. Once I factored in priority walls, detention areas, and phasing, there were about 100 deliveries expected for this scope alone!! The subcontractor almost had a heart attack when I sent him the delivery schedule."
Karen is currently assigned to Preconstruction & Estimating.
"The dining center at UC Merced was an all-steel building with lots of fancy dining equipment and MEPs (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) to make that equipment run smoothly, and although I can't take credit for coordinating the steel and installation of MEPs by myself, being involved with the coordination was definitely a challenge. What made it a challenge for me was mostly inexperience. It was my first time running trade coordination, and I just remember feeling like I was on fire (internally) having to run the BIM coordination meetings and often not sure if subs were just walking all over me because of my inexperience, and that translated to the field install as well. I learned so much through that process though and truly experienced the importance of leaning on your team and the experts in the rooms to make any difficult coordination effort possible. The most important thing I took from being on fire (internally) all the time was never being afraid to ask the 'dumb question' -- I got really comfortable with that. And as far as the steel structure goes, I'm still learning!"
Bhavana is currently working at the American Express SFO Centurion Lounge Renovation and Expansion.
"My most difficult scope was the MEP Sustainability Commissioning testing at San Francisco International Airport, Boarding Area B (BAB), in Phase 1. The reason for this was there were multiple BMS controls conversations with several people over the course of multiple years. The changes that occurred in the plan were documented, but not all the reasons were documented. When it was time for testing, the third-party agent was very new and difficult to deal with. In the initial tests, our subcontractor kept failing the test for reasons nobody could figure out. There were a lot of difficult conversations when we could not reason why there were multiple changes in the plan. Our subcontractors and MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) team incorporated a rigorous pre-testing schedule to make sure we passed all the tests. The plan worked, and our subcontractors passed all the tests again in the span of two weeks. We recovered the commissioning schedule again, which was awesome. After the tests were complete, we signed off on HVAC controls testing for Phase 1 in 6 months' time, closing 400-plus punch list items. A huge kudos to the MEP team, including the subcontractors. The owner was very impressed, as this is big for a project of 100,000-plus square feet. In the next two phases, we, along with our subcontractors, passed everything in one go and literally had a minimum punch list because we already knew what to expect."
Webcor will turn the spotlight on our amazing female employees with a new recurring series featuring Women of Webcor (WOW), our ERG for women.
Beginning today, Webcor will turn the spotlight on our amazing female employees with a new recurring series featuring Women of Webcor (WOW), the company's Employee Resource Group for women. The debut of the series coincides with Women in Construction Week 2022, which is the first full week of Women's History Month.
The focus of Women in Construction (WIC) Week is to highlight women as a viable component of the construction industry. This year's theme, "Envision Equity," seeks to raise awareness of a wide range of roles in the construction industry that women enjoy.
Each installment in the series of articles will pose a question and feature answers from WOW members. The initial set of questions include the following:
...and more.
We Asked Four of Webcor's Women Builders About Their Most Memorable Moment Working in Construction
Women account for only about 10 percent of the construction workforce. That makes every woman builder a groundbreaker. Webcor is celebrating its female builders during Women in Construction Week with the first in an ongoing series in which Women of Webcor will share their expertise, perspectives, and memories. The first in this series features four WOW members recounting their most memorable moment working in construction.
Bhavana is currently working at the American Express SFO Centurion Lounge Renovation and Expansion.
My favorite memory is seeing the opening of SFO Terminal 1 Boarding Area B. That moment gave me goosebumps. I was literally just three years in construction, managing projects up to $50M. On this massive project of close to $1 billion, I got to manage MEP Sustainability Commissioning testing for all phases and manage one of the core trades, special systems scope for Phase 2 and Phase 3. I knew nothing about MEP and special systems before stepping foot on this project. I did good and was very appreciated for the work that I put into this project. I learned a lot about construction and airport construction in general. I moved on to also manage BIM and tenant management in Phase 3 which also made my contribution pretty significant to the project. I was super proud of being a part of one of the biggest terminals in the world. It felt like a great achievement for being a part of the massive team that made the first LEED Platinum airport terminal in the world. It is the biggest highlight of my resume.
Isha is currently working at the Transbay Parcel F project.
The use of technology in construction always excites me. My manager at the time encouraged me to create barcodes that could link all the construction issues of a particular area. I was pleasantly surprised to see the positive response it got.
Later, we used this technology and 3D renderings to showcase how the building would look in the future.
It brought immense satisfaction when field personnel used their mobile phones to visualize complex spaces with such ease.
Angela works in Project Support in Northern California.
I was fresh out of college working on the renovation of Concord Pavilion as a Project Engineer. Many of the big, burly foremen didn't take me seriously because I'm a smaller person and was very young. After several months of being out in the field every day and putting out fires, the structural steel foreman came up to ME one day (instead of the superintendent) to say that the area where the JLG needed to go wasn't flat enough. Once that was taken care of the same morning, the floodgates opened and all the foremen started coming to me. Two lessons learned from that experience: it takes patience and perseverance to earn respect, and the trade foremen definitely talk to each other.
Karen is currently assigned to Preconstruction & Estimating.
I have a two-part response, but they are both related. Receiving TCO (temporary certificate of occupancy) for the Dining Center at UC Merced was awesome! As my first project ever, it was my first experience in what receiving TCO meant, and the team had great camaraderie. We all worked very hard to hit the date almost exactly to what it needed to be and we did it. So the excitement of everybody around that was awesome and very memorable. Similarly, I was super lucky to be nominated to participate in the grand opening that UC Merced held for the first delivery buildings and it was awesome because the milestone was celebrated across the board from Webcor to students to the University and that made everybody's hard work feel validated. I don't think that will happen ever again in my career.
