Photo / Tim Greenway
Yi Peng found her way to a position as structural and marine engineer, with HNTB Corp., through a variety of educational and scholarship opportunities.
Updated: May 31, 2021
Work for ME 2021 — Construction & Trades
The building business is booming: Construction companies want to help build careers
Photo / Tim Greenway
Great Falls Construction project administrator Joey Smith
At age 25, Joey Smith has a thriving career in construction and is already serving as an advocate to help other young people get into the industry and climb the ladder.
Smith is a project administrator at Great Falls Construction in Gorham and chair of the steering committee of the Emerging Contractors Group, a group of young leaders in the construction industry.
“I’m two-and-a-half years out of school and working full-time and comfortable with where I’m at financially,” he says. “You find your niche in construction, and you can do well.”
Beyond stereotypes
Communicating all of the opportunities in construction and related trades can be a challenge. Many people stereotype the industry as hard labor. But pathways abound, says Matthew Marks, CEO of Associated General Contractors of Maine in Augusta.
Finance graduates, for example, “probably think there’s no place for them in construction,” Marks says. “But there is. They can be part of an estimating team or finance department.”
Also appealing? The ability to chart individual paths and leverage diverse training programs.
“There’s no ceiling,” he continues. “We’ve seen people learn a trade like welding, then becoming project managers and sometimes owners.”
Teamwork can be attractive.
“People coming from high school or college who were part of a band or athletics or a club and enjoyed that team camaraderie – you get that with construction,” he says. “It’s kind of unique. You have a timeline and all of the cogs in the wheel have to come together. There’s a lot of helping each other out.”
The industry is also intellectually engaging. Take trench-digging.
“There’s a science to how you dig a trench and where you place the material and what kind of material you put in the trench to support what you’re installing,” Marks says. “It’s not just digging a hole.”
There‘s really no limitation.
— Yi Peng, HNTB Corp.
No limits
Yi Peng, a structural and marine engineer at HNTB Corp. in South Portland, exemplifies those attributes. Employed there since 2019, duties include proposal, design and budget development and management. A recent project was bridge construction in Woolwich.
Peng grew up in China and moved to Maine as a young adult in 2009, received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Maine in 2016 and receive a master's degree in civil engineering in 2018. Her research focuses on ultra-high performance concrete modified by wood pulp byproducts. She’s won numerous scholarships, including several from AGC.
The job came about through an internship with HNTB. Now age 35, much of the work is computer-based, allowing her to work on out-of-state projects, too.
“There‘s really no limitation,” she says. “If you become a knowledgeable expert in certain fields, you can easily expand.”
You can be on your way to earnings without a huge, or any, student debt.
— Matthew Marks, AGC Maine
Demand for employees
AGC Maine presents programs to schools and career fairs about the opportunities. Marks says people are often surprised that jobs with higher-than-average salaries don’t require advanced degrees but only training through community colleges or certificate and employer programs and apprenticeships.
“You can be on your way to earnings without a huge, or any, student debt,” he says. Jobs abound. For example, Maine has a dire need for electricians, due to circumstances like the expanding solar industry and a growing need for electrical infrastructure.
“If you have a daughter or son with an aptitude to work with their hands and is also inclined to learn applied math or science skills, what a great opportunity,” he says. “It’s a combination of learning in the field and bookwork. You come out of that with your license — and that’s gold.”
File Photo / James McCarthy
Matthew Marks, CEO of Associated General Contractors of Maine
Many companies offer educational assistance, while competition for employees is driving pay and benefits ever higher, he adds.
The opportunity to forge his own path was attractive to Smith. Great Falls is owned by his parents and he spent summers jumping into jobs, including demolition, clean-up and general labor. He got a business degree, with a minor in communication, at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., returned to Maine and started at Great Falls in 2018, putting his degree to work on estimating, marketing, finance and project management.
He enjoys the wide-ranging work. “I really like the exposure to all the different industries that we have a hand in building here in Maine,” he says of the diverse projects. “But also, and it sounds cliché, I enjoy the people we work with, building relationships with folks in Maine.” n
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