Bay Area homebuilder hopes to encourage more women to enter construction

In light of Women in Construction week, one Bay Area construction superintendent hopes her story can encourage more women to join the industry. 

"This is my office. This is the best office in the world," Adrea Vladyka, superintendent with Taylor Morrison, told CBS News Bay Area. 

Vladyka oversees the construction of more than 90 homes in the Rosemary Grove at Lagoon Valley neighborhood in Vacaville. 

"I am the only superintendent for Taylor Morrison that is a woman on this Bay Area division," she said. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women make up about 11% of the construction industry nationally. At Taylor Morrison, a national homebuilder company, 44% of the workforce is female. 

For Vladyka, her passion for all things hands-on started when she was young. 

"My dad was an electrician. And so, his friends would say, 'would you mind coming over and helping me?' And he'd say, 'Oh yeah, I'll bring my daughters.' And I swear my dad wanted two boys, he got two girls. And so, he made do with what he had," she said. 

After graduating college, she got the opportunity to build eight homes. That soon launched her career in construction. 

"I am boss lady on this job site, and then I have to go home and put my mom hat, and do dinner and homework," she said. 

Labor experts hope that more women in the Bay Area can join the construction industry. 

"Training requires more opportunities for apprenticeship and learning on the job. And you need more projects with those opportunities. So, the lower side on the residential construction side prevents some of those opportunities, but on the public infrastructure side, there's more opportunity there," Enrique Lopezlira, the director of low-wage work program at UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, said. 

He said the state of construction in the Bay Area is mixed, due to uncertainty from tariffs and high interest rates. 

"If housing and construction becomes slow, the slowness we're seeing, if it becomes really persistent because of all the uncertainty in the larger economy, then you have less opportunities for that.  So, it's not just about recruiting, I want to be clear about that. There's one thing to recruit women into these occupations, but you also have to train them through actual opportunities," he told CBS News Bay Area. 

Vladyka hopes her journey in the construction industry will inspire others to join the business. 

"One of the biggest things in this industry that keeps me going is handing the homeowner their keys, and knowing that I built the house that is going to outlast me," she said. 

She added that she is grateful for her team's support in uplifting more women in the workforce. 

"I have homeowners that say, 'oh that's awesome, a woman's going to build our house!' Women are way more detail-oriented. And I will absolutely agree," Vladyka added.