Procurement Agent Levels Playing Field for Subcontractors
Sharon Mayer describes her journey to become a woman in construction as “a fluke.” Mayer, an acting procurement agent for Lakeside Alliance, builders of the Obama Presidential Center, says she first sought a career in accounting. Then fate intervened in the summer of 1980 when she interviewed for a summer job as a receptionist at a professional estimating firm in Chicago but got hired on as an estimator in training instead. That fall, she switched majors and continued her training by day and attended night school until 1986, when she earned a bachelor’s degree in Construction Management and Engineering Technology from Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, Indiana.
Today, Mayer is part of the Lakeside Alliance team tasked with fulfilling the Obama Foundation’s promise to award 50 percent of subcontracts on the OPC project to diverse businesses, a goal that far exceeds the City of Chicago’s.
Mayer considers herself lucky to have had such a flourishing career in the male-dominated construction industry. Learning other aspects of the business tends to happen organically, enabling her to stretch and gain new skills. While raising a family with her husband, who is a pipefitter, she was able to advance to a senior project manager position that included procurement responsibilities before joining Powers & Sons Construction in 2014.
“I came here to be strictly an estimator, and that’s what I’ve done up until they needed someone to do procurement on this project. I thought, well, I can do that. It’s a little switching of gears, but it’s worked out great.”
Once Mayer receives the list of subcontractors invited to submit a bid, she follows up with each one to help them prepare, review and upload their bids into the Building Connected cloud-based software. Once that’s done, Mayer puts on her estimator cap to conduct scope of work reviews to level the bids and make sure they are apples to apples.
“You’re going to have some bidders who think they can do the work faster. That’s how you get to the low bidder. The problem comes when one doesn’t include the entire scope of work into the bid and they are awarded the project, and then say, ‘I didn't know I was supposed to have that.’ This (bid leveling) process eliminates after-thought problems. Once the bids are on a level playing field, then selection can be made.
The final bid packages will be released shortly, with bidding slated to conclude in late spring. Mayer views her involvement with the OPC as the pinnacle of her career. “I wanted to work on this project the minute I learned Lakeside Alliance had been selected. I think President Obama was a wonderful president, and at this point in my career, it will be a nice way to finish on a high note.”
Mayer says it’s baffling why more women aren’t choosing careers in construction. Women in Construction Week will be celebrated March 6-12. It was created to raise awareness of opportunities and the growing roles for women in the sector, its origins dating back to the early 1950s.
“I sit on the advisory board for the program I graduated from at Purdue Hammond, and there are no more women in the construction and engineering program there today than when I attended in the 1980s,” she said. “I struggle with it. I am a huge proponent of STEM education because of that.”
Yet, somehow, her children both wound up in construction-adjacent careers. Her son, a former journalist, works for a software developer whose primary clients are contractors. Her daughter is in marketing for a national roofing distributor. One day, Mayer said her daughter called to tell her about an after-work event she attended for a group called Women in Construction.
“My husband and I laugh. They were so far away from wanting to do anything Mom and Dad did.”
That’s how flukes work.