Episode 10 - Virnetta Woodbury | Engineer & Project Manager | Brasfield & Gorrie
When she started working in preconstruction at the Birmingham construction firm Brasfield & Gorrie in 2006, she was much more reserved than she is now. “There were fewer females in construction management back then,” she says. “It took time for me to feel established. Now, there are many more women working in these roles.”
Now, in the 16 years since starting at the firm, Woodbury has climbed the ranks, becoming an assistant project manager in 2008 before being promoted again to a project manager in 2013. In that role, she’s been an integral part of some of Birmingham’s largest construction projects, such as the Birmingham CrossPlex and the BJCC’s newly completed Protective Stadium.
Woodbury’s interest in construction stretches back to the eighth grade, when her father, who worked night shifts at a local trucking company, devised a home-improvement project during one of his nights off. “One Friday night, he just said, ‘Your mom wants the dining room floor raised. I’ve got some wood downstairs. That’s something we can do tonight,’” Woodbury says.
That project left an impression. “Watching that floor transform from a regular floor to a raised floor overnight was kind of my inspiration to go into construction,” she says. “I wanted to go into a job where you could physically see something changing. It’s kind of like a garden — you plant it, and then you see the results from it.”
After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in civil engineering, Woodbury took a job with Brasfield & Gorrie, where she’d previously held a summer internship. One of her first jobs as a project manager was in Orlando, the first she was able to see “all the way through,” from the conceptual stage to completion – an important experience, she says, which showed her that “construction in the field is completely different from just estimating.” Sometimes, it required improvisation, like navigating Florida’s tempestuous weather.
“We knew we had a storm that could come through at 2:30 p.m. every day,” she laughs. “Every single day like clockwork it would come through. So we had to start work early to make sure we had everything ready to shut down at 2:30, and then pick up after the storm.”
She also learned from construction superintendents’ on-site knowledge, which could often reshuffle plans she’d made in preconstruction. “You may think you know the way to do something, but there’s always multiple ways to solve problems,” she says. “A lot of times, the ones in the field who have been doing it for so long, they’re a lot more efficient with what they’re doing because they’ve had experience.”
Woodbury has garnered plenty of experience of her own since then. She oversaw the construction of the Birmingham CrossPlex, an indoor athletic facility near Five Points West. That development remains special to Woodbury, not only because she’s a former UA track and cross-country runner, but because it was one of her first projects she could visit after it was completed.
“Up until I built that project, a lot of my projects had been more like power plants — jobs you do that are very important, but at the end of the day you can’t go back to them to see the work we’ve done,” Woodbury says, adding that feedback from the community was another important factor. “I’ll never forget walking the facility one day with the current UA track coach, who ran track with me in college,” she says. “He kept talking about how the CrossPlex was so good to have right here in Birmingham… It’s so important for the local community [to have access to that kind of facility].”
More recently, Woodbury oversaw construction on the food service areas of Protective Stadium, an undertaking that took even more coordination than usual. “The way that job was divided, we had several project managers out there working,” she says. “We had to work as a team to make sure everything got done. From my standpoint, that meant coordinating with the city inspectors, property owners and trade contractors to make sure that everybody worked together.”
“That’s one of the unique things about being a project manager: dealing with different personalities,” she adds. “Nobody’s the same. Sometimes you have to figure out how to encourage people to collaborate because they’re all working toward the same goal: completing the project.”
That kind of diplomacy takes the confidence that Woodbury didn’t have when she started at Brasfield & Gorrie. “But having to deal with different personalities to get the job done — property owners, architects and design teams — has allowed me to open up more,” she says. “It’s forced me to say, ‘This is what I do! I’m good at what I do!’”
