Gesa is a site manager at ZÜBLIN.

Has it always been your aim to work in the construction industry?

My parents and grandparents come from a background in the construction industry. At first, I wanted to go in a different direction and didn’t want to work in construction at all; I wanted to study medicine. However, as I didn’t want to spend so many semesters on the waiting list, I started my degree in civil engineering. I’m very glad I did.

How and when did you join ZÜBLIN?

I was born in Hamburg, grew up in Berlin, took my Abitur in Essen, studied civil engineering in Aachen and graduated with a Master’s degree. A friend of mine was working as a student trainee at ZÜBLIN at the time. He enjoyed it, so I decided to apply too. I finally joined the company as a student trainee in 2014. Since then, I have worked on a wide variety of interesting projects in Hamburg, Cologne and Munich.

Is your job as a site manager what you imagined it would be?

Thanks to my parents, I already knew quite a bit about the construction industry. As a student worker, I was able to gain even deeper insights and thus get a good idea of what my current job entails. At first, it felt strange to be working exclusively with men, and I had to stand my ground. But that wasn’t just down to gender; it was also down to age. I was significantly younger than many of my colleagues and staff members.

What about the issue of diversity?

To be honest, I had expected there to be more women at my workplace. During my degree, the ratio of women to men was around 40 per cent to 60 per cent (if you include industrial engineers). Unfortunately, I don’t always see this ratio reflected in practice in my projects and roles within the group.

As a woman on a building site, did you face any particular challenges?

Amongst us engineers, it’s not an issue at all that, as a woman, you have to prove yourself any more than anyone else. On site, however, there was once a site manager from a subcontractor who apparently had something against women in the construction industry and always took his concerns to my project manager instead of communicating with me directly. I raised this issue with both the site manager in question and my project manager. My project manager ensured that roles were clearly defined and communicated this clearly. The site manager quickly realised that he could only make progress by talking to me directly and that I was very competent in my job. In the end, he even told my line manager that working with me had been a wonderful experience. Fortunately, that has been the only hurdle I’ve encountered in this regard so far.

What do you need to bring to the role to do a good job as a site manager?

A successfully completed degree in civil engineering forms the basis for this role. In addition, you should possess team spirit, assertiveness, the ability to work independently, and a good dose of organisational and communication skills. Another plus: an openness to innovation.
 
As site managers, we bear a great deal of responsibility for the success of a construction project and must therefore be able to act proactively and make decisions. That is why initiative and a sense of responsibility are essential for the job. We must be able to adapt quickly to changing conditions and challenges and find solutions to optimise the construction process and keep the project on schedule and within budget.

What motivates you most about your job?

I really enjoy communicating and working with people. I wake up every morning and think: “Yay! I get to go to work!” Seeing progress every day is another thing that keeps me motivated. In my job, you get to see what’s taking shape every day, and in the end you have a finished structure. I hope I never lose the joy I get from my job.

What career advice would you give your younger self?

It’s definitely worth getting some practical experience early on by taking on a working student role. I wish I’d started doing that in the very first semesters of my bachelor’s degree; then a lot of things would certainly have been easier for me. Generally speaking, though, the rule is: ‘
’ Do what you enjoy – that’s the only way you’ll be good at and successful in what you do.

What is your mission for the future?

I want to get young people interested in project-based work again and make them want to get ‘out there’ onto the building site. Working as a site manager on a building site is so varied. No two days are the same, and you rarely know in the morning how the day will unfold. That’s what makes it – for me personally – so exciting and constantly challenging.

You can find more insights into Gesa’s job in the video: