Diversity initiatives, more demand boosting female builders

DALLAS - As a girl growing up in the west Texas oil patch, Arcilia Carrasco loved following her father to his construction sites. She'd take a high perch and even play roofer.

Now, she's "la jefa," the top boss, at her own construction company, Carcon Industries and Construction.

Wendy Lopez grew up in Louisiana's Cajun country, where survival skills seem linked to DNA. That might be why she boldly gave Dallas banks an RFP, a request for their proposals, for her business a few years back.

Now, the civil engineer heads Lopez/Garcia Group, an architecture, engineering and construction firm that's on a serious growth streak.

Construction firms are still unconventional businesses for women to own. According to the Census Bureau, only about 7 percent of them are run by women.

But thanks to raw need - the construction boom in north Texas - more women like Carrasco (now Carrasco Acosta) and Lopez are heading firms in specialties ranging from framing to architecture and engineering.

In fact, a fifth of the 550 members at the Women's Business Council of the Southwest fall into construction/architecture and engineering.

"A certain amount of this growth is supply and demand," said Lopez as she sits in an office overlooking construction at the Trinity River.

Then, she added, grinning, "We are so busy now that I can't say grace over what we have here."

Public-sector construction spending is up, in part because of expansion of the rail lines and new Dallas schools. And office construction in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, has jumped from 250,000 square feet at the end of 2003 to 4.4 million square feet at the end of 2005, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The rise in new construction and rebuilding along the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast have made it difficult to find workers in north Texas, said Carrasco Acosta as she walks around a construction site.

Both Carrasco Acosta and Lopez are Hispanic. Carrasco Acosta traces both parents' roots back to Mexico, and Lopez said her father is a descendant of Spanish settlers in Louisiana.

Hispanics have the most significant share of ownership in construction firms among the major minority groups, according to census data. Eight percent of all construction firms nationally are owned by Hispanics, and 7.5 percent of all women-owned construction firms are headed by Hispanic women.

At the Women's Business Council, the cluster of women managing construction firms has grown so swiftly that two years ago, the council started the ACE committee. It stands for architecture, construction and engineering.

The committee holds meetings around such themes as networking with prime contractors - usually firms headed by men who oversee contracting work.

"Women in these nontraditional fields are just as successful and as likely to grow," said Debbie Hurst, the council's president.

To back up her point, she notes a recent study done by the Center for Women's Business Research in Washington. It found that the No. 1 reason women choose to be in a nontraditional business is to generate income and financial independence. The second reason is satisfaction and passion about the work.

The Arlington, Texas-based women's business council reports that most of the businesses in the ACE cluster have average revenue of $4 million. Nearly a quarter have revenue of more than $5 million.

Among the larger firms is the Warrior Group, headed by Gail Warrior-Lawrence, who co-chairs the ACE group. Her firm makes modular buildings and recently won contracts to provide mobile homes following Hurricane Katrina.

"One of the reasons that women do so well in engineering and architecture and construction is it's a highly detailed and process-oriented field and relationship-oriented," said Warrior-Lawrence. "Women know how to do that."

Jim Schultz, a senior manager for support services at construction giant Fluor Corp., agrees and said an eye for detail is crucial in construction. Schultz co-chairs the ACE group and pushed for its formation.

Female CEOs inspire competition in an industry that's been too clubby, Schultz said. In the past, there have been construction owners who may have thought they were locked in with us, Schultz said.

Behind his activism with women and minority business groups is the thinking: "Let's get out there and see who the players are and drive some competition. Competition is about competence and quality of work and the safety record."

Being a woman in a nontraditional field can be both a plus and a minus, say the CEOs.

Lopez's firm has grown to 180 people in offices in three states. Part of that growth came when the Lopez firm merged with Garcia and Associates Engineering in Dallas in 2002. Lopez holds the majority stake.

Her office speaks to the gritty, the architecturally inspirational and the archeological aspects of the firm's work.

There are hard hats among elegant art deco furniture. Near the door is a gilt sarcophagus, an Egyptian burial contraption that Lopez jokes she repurposed for bad-tempered employees. The firm also does archeological reconnaissance, retrieving historical artifacts.

One of the firm's high-profile projects is a piece of the work at One Arts Plaza, a $125 million office and residential building in the museum district. The project is led by Dallas developer Lucy Billingsley, who is the first woman to build a major downtown development from the ground up.

The doors were pulled open for women in the construction world, in part because of the rise of diversity initiatives.

A female business owner can get an edge in government contracts, which are tied to goals that a certain percentage of dollars be spent with businesses owned by women or with racial and ethnic minorities.

And more corporations in the private sector are seeking to diversify their contracting with women- and minority-owned companies.

Lopez still believes female CEOs are seen as fronts for men who control the businesses. "Women are suspects all the time," she said. "I think it is an old myth you have to work off."

Female and minority business owners go through a certification process with recognized agencies to prove they are, indeed, the majority owner of a company.

The benefits of being a woman-owned construction contractor are making their way to the Carcon balance sheet of late.

Revenue has doubled in the last five years. Among Carrasco Acosta's bigger contracts is a portion of the Dallas Independent School District's $1.3 billion expansion project and a piece of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System's $340 million expansion project.

But what Carcon's healthy balance sheet won't show is the occasional condescension that seeps into business dealings. There have been times when the CEO has been told to fetch the boss, "Mr. Acosta."

But she generally shrugs it off. "I thought, I am just going to have to earn my stripes," said the CEO, who's fond of cowboy boots with yellow roses.

Relationship building wins contracts but goes hand-in-glove with reputation building, Carrasco Acosta said.

"There is a whole big buzz on women and minority business owners," she said. "It's a competitive advantage - but it can't be the reason you exist. The objective always has to be: `We can get the job done.'"

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(c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.