SAN ANTONIO – More than 20 years ago, EMBREY executive Helena Finley had no idea she’d be where she is today.
Starting her career in the hotel industry, she hadn’t given construction a second thought until she was looking for new opportunities. One day, in 2002, she spied a job that would require someone with expertise in scheduling, budgeting and managing teams. it was a construction management job, but she didn’t realize it as she was looking at it.
“If I had known the opportunity I was looking at ... was in construction, I wouldn’t have applied because I would’ve thought, ‘I don’t know anything about construction,” she said in an interview with the Business Journal. But she went for it anyway, saying the owner of the company was looking to hire outside of the industry to get a fresh perspective on his projects.
She won the job, managing the build of modular apartment projects in Houston. She hasn’t looked back since. Now her life is a bit more complex. She was recently named managing partner and executive vice president of construction at EMBREY, a job that shepherds multifamily construction projects from start to finish in several states.
Her time on construction sites gives her an edge, whether in negotiating contracts or working through timelines with subcontractors, she said.
“I think you’re able to understand the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional part of construction, which you could never explain in a course or in school,” she said. “You have to just live it and breathe it.”
That also helps her navigate the industry’s challenges, whether it’s in supply chain management or labor shortages.
“We still have some lagging supply chain issues and surprises,” she said. “Electrical gear is still a year out. Of course, now we know it versus the pandemic we weren’t prepared for that. Now we’re buying [the equipment] immediately so we get ahead of those kinds of things.”
Interest rates and materials costs are also an issue, but Finley says that EMBREY itself is prepared to push on with a handful of starts this year.
“The bottom line is we still have a massive housing shortage,” she said. “We have to overcome that somehow, so I think the future is bright in the long run. There’s a short slowdown. We’re not starting as many projects as we originally thought this year, but we are starting four for sure and we may start up to eight depending on how the year pans out.”
Solving the labor issue, though, is a more complex problem. Many skilled in the trades have aged out of the industry, making them hard to replace. A huge part of working through the industry’s labor shortages, she asserts, is getting more women interested in the trades. Whenever she meets with other women in the industry, she tells them to talk to girls in school about their paths, which can paint a greater picture of working in construction.
“So let them see and hear you speak,” she said. “A high school student who may not have even considered construction as a career may now consider it because of the visibility.”
Beyond that, it’s convincing more leaders in the trades to step up their recruitment efforts towards women. If a subcontractor tells her about a shortage in talent, she cuts to the heart of the matter.
“How many women are in your crew,” she asks. “When they say one or two out of 50, I say, ‘well, you’re missing 50% percent of the workforce, so try harder.’”
Read the fully story in the San Antonio Business Journal.
Editor’s note: This story was published through a partnership between KSAT and the San Antonio Business Journal.