Born into a family deeply rooted in construction, Jaimie Houk's career path seemed predetermined. Her father owned a grading and paving company, her aunt was a vice president at AGC San Diego, and her brothers and cousins are all involved in various aspects of the industry.

Still, Jaimie initially opted for beauty school. Her aunt called and offered her a job at AGC, and despite her mother's objections, she decided to drop out and give construction a try. Her experience at AGC proved invaluable, exposing her to the intricacies of industry negotiations and forming relationships that would shape her career.

"I never regretted leaving beauty school," Jaimie says. "I never looked back. I always loved construction."

Working on Her Hometown Ballpark

She was hired as a field office manager for Clark Construction when a Clark JV (with Barnhardt and Dilligham) was awarded the Petco Park construction job. Like so many others, Jaimie found that being on a team and building her hometown ballpark was incredibly gratifying -- until it came to a grinding halt over a dispute between the Padres and the City of San Diego over who would pay for it. "So I moved to Texas with Clark to work on the Enron twin towers."

Enron's well-documented collapse was one reason Jaimie's time in Texas was cut short. Hurricane Allison and the huge insurance claim it led to meant Jaimie only spent about a year there before returning home to Southern California. "That was the only time I ever moved away from home." She didn't return immediately to construction. In fact, for a while, she tended a bar near Petco Park serving her former coworkers before taking a job in a trailer in Alpine, California, for a company re-building single-family residences after the 2003 and 2007 wildfires.

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When a different company she was working for went under, Jaimie was pregnant when she applied for a job at Webcor, ultimately getting a position through a temp agency starting as a project coordinator after she gave birth. "This was back when Webcor still had its original office in San Diego, in 2007," she recalls.

A Preference for Webcor

The projects she worked on during that stretch included the Discovery Corporate Center, Sony's office complex, and a renovation of the Hyatt Regency. "It was great," she remembers. "I've been with a lot of companies, but there's something about Webcor. It's by far the best. They care about their people, they're flexible, and they're willing to help you out when you're unable to help yourself."

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An example of that tendency to help happened when the San Diego office closed. "Webcor didn't have a position to fill, but they kept me on anyway to work from home and help with estimating and preconstruction work," she says. "It was an opportunity to try my hand at a lot of different elements of construction."

Some of that work occurred in San Diego, including concrete work at UC San Diego and a tenant improvement project on a downtown penthouse. She also worked on a Camp Pendleton project doing RFIs and submittals. She also performed various tasks on projects like Silverlake and Metropolis in Los Angeles.

On-the-Job Learning

"I just kept learning on the job," she says. "My experience joint-venturing on our federal projects set me up well. I  was one of a team of five who led Webcor down our first Webcor-only federal journey, building the federal best practices along the way."

Now a 17-year Webcor veteran and a senior project accountant, Jaimie is delighted to be working for the revived San Diego team. Before the first Webcor office closed, she worked with VP Cecilia Kucharski and Project Director Matt Johnson. "I worked with Matt on the Orange Park project," she says.

A Suicide Prevention Volunteer

Outside of her professional life, Jaimie is passionate about helping teenagers. She's involved with American Suicide Prevention and participates in various community initiatives through Webcor.

As a mother of four children aged 6, 7, 15, and 17, Jaimie balances her professional commitments with family life. She describes herself as a "professional development junkie," having read 400 books in 5 years while managing her career and family. All that PD has served her well. "This is a great industry with good people," she says. "Even if I didn't have to work, I would."