Britni Rhett (left), Construction Project Administrator, and
Bernadette Caparas, Design Coordinator, are engineers with
the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
WOMEN TAKE LEADING ROLES IN PROJECT JOURNEY CONSTRUCTION
BY KRISTIN NEVELS CLARKSON
In one of his most popular ballads, the late soul crooner James Brown
sang, “This is a man’s world.” And in male-dominated professions like
construction and engineering, where in 2016 women made up 9 and 13
percent of the workforce respectively, Brown’s proclamation sounds
credible on the surface.
But at Project Journey, the construction project at Ronald Reagan
Washington National Airport, women play several key roles on the
jobsite and at the management table. They are helping to design and
construct two security checkpoint buildings and a 14-gate concourse
that, when complete, will streamline passenger flow and provide a
higher level of service for airline customers.
Bernadette Caparas and Britni Rhett are employed by the
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees the
project, and Claire Smith works for Turner Construction Company, the
primary contractor. All are engineers who discovered a love for math
and science and began to envision their career paths while sitting in
their kindergarten classrooms.
“I always knew I was going to be an engineer or architect because I
liked math and it seemed like a natural progression,” Caparas said.
FLYWASHINGTON.COM 18 SPRING 2019
“I have always loved math. I have always loved critical thinking. It’s like
a magnetic force,” Rhett said. “I like the tangibility of it. It’s something
you can watch in front of you and touch,” Smith added.
Project manager Hallie Burdin, also with Turner Construction Company,
feels like she was destined for a career in construction after being
raised in a construction family. “I guess it was fate that I got into
construction,” Burdin said.
Now, the women find themselves working in positions at MWAA
and Turner where their responsibilities include communicating with
colleagues daily to coordinate work plans and progress, ensuring
work meets design specifications, keeping the project on time and on
budget and resolving any conflicts that may come up.
And when there is a job to do, the women perform the same way their
male colleagues would. They come from behind the desk, put on their
safety gear and make field visits.
“I’ve had to put on my steel toe boots, my yellow highlighter
construction vest and my hard hat with my dress and go out on site and
take care of business,” said Rhett. “Whenever duty calls, duty calls.”