She’s Got This Male-Dominated Career Nailed Down

It is no longer rare to find women like Mary Larkins out on a construction site, though the building industry does remain about 90% guy country.

Yet despite her blond good looks, Larkins, 36, insists that after 17 years, she has largely been spared the well-worn stereotypes of wolfish co-workers.

No leers or catcalls? No condescending remarks of the “don’t hurt yourself little lady” variety?

“Actually,” says an amused Larkins, the only female project manager for R.D. Olson Construction in Irvine, one of the largest Southland builders, “in my industry I feel very accepted. It’s my family that I dread calling. You’d think it was the opposite in a male industry, but I get more flak from my mother and my sisters.

“The only person who supports me is my father,” she adds with a resigned sigh, “and my three kids.”

In fact, the most trying part of her job is juggling the rest of her life as a single parent of three small children--two sons, 6 and 8, and a daughter, 7--so that she still can make Little League games and other family commitments.

Weekday mornings begin at 4, when Larkins wakes up. For the last several years her routine has included leaving her Redlands home at 4:30 a.m. to beat traffic on the drive to Irvine. There she squeezes in a quick gym visit before she starts work at 7 a.m.

Since Larkins is a project manager, her work doesn’t involve hammering nails or hanging drywall; she did not come up “through the trades.” She says this is not uncommon in project management. Such hands-on experience is more typical of project superintendents at the level immediately below her.

‘A Joy to Have

as an Employee’

Larkins’ job is to shepherd numerous building projects, from the Sony Studios to five-star hotels to multimillion-dollar estates, by making sure her site superintendents have what they need, that subcontractors are working out and everything stays within deadline and budget. At her entry level the salary starts at about $55,000 and climbs to $75,000, says R.D. Olson Construction President Dennis Reyling, with potential for bonuses based on customer satisfaction.

“She’s tremendously hard-working, and she loves what she does. These are not traits unique to women or men,” Reyling says. “She approaches her job with the attitude of, ‘I’m a project manager, I belong here,’ not, ‘I’m a female project manager.’ I can honestly say she’s a joy to have as an employee. And when you add in her personal situation to it and that added challenge, I must tell you she has my respect and that of others.”

One day last week, she started in Irvine, spent the morning at a luxury home in progress on a stunning Corona del Mar bluff top, drove to Culver City for an 11 a.m. meeting with Sony Studios and returned to Orange County for meetings all afternoon. She finally hit the road for Redlands about 6 p.m. She lives by laptop and cell phone.

Depending on the children’s schedules, Larkins usually scoops up her kids at the baby-sitter’s and takes them to their father’s home, where they dine and spend time as a family before bath time and bedtime. She stays until they are asleep before heading home.

Until recently that was a quick drive across town. But in an ongoing effort to squeeze in every hour possible with her kids, she moved to Irvine three weeks ago so that her time on the road back to Irvine falls long after they are asleep.

Working around dirt and lumber was hardly the plan when Larkins enrolled as an economics major at UC Irvine almost two decades ago. But her initial career choice also featured a predominantly male cast of workers.

“I wanted to be a stockbroker,” she says. “I had a few friends doing it, and the adrenaline rush appealed to me.”

Unlike many women whose husbands, fathers or brothers helped them into construction, Larkins drifted into the field by happenstance. While still in high school in Fountain Valley, she took a summer job as a receptionist. One of the company’s clients included a landscape maintenance firm. She hired on there and eventually learned how to bid contracts, make estimates for cost and make schedules. Over the years, she lost track of the stock market and worked her way up at a handful of development companies.

Larkins is like half of the women in the industry; they work in the sales or administrative side of the construction business, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Women total 9% of the estimated 8.3 million U.S. building industry workers.) The bureau reports that the number of females working in construction has actually declined since 1991, despite recruiting and public relations campaigns to attract women to fill a huge labor demand fueled by a building boom in recent years.

But many builders say a lingering salty reputation and competition from the glitzier high-tech industry--which also has a voracious need for labor--make construction a harder sell for women.

“I think it always depends on the person. But Mary is good because Mary is good,” says Dana Bowyer, the R.D. Olson project superintendent on the coastal mansion project who reports to Larkins. “But I find that by having women in construction, they bring new ideas and thoughts, whereas I’d been taught just these three other perspectives. I’m raising daughters, and I tell them, ‘Don’t let anyone stop you from doing what you want, not a man, not anyone.’ ”

Not Much Time for

a Personal Life

Weekday mornings, the kids are usually seen off to school by their father, who works varied hours at a steel plant, Larkins says. Then either Dad or the baby-sitter fetches the children after school.

And her personal life?

“It’s really very difficult. I have the kids all weekend. Sunday night is my night [alone], but other than that,” she says with a laugh, “it’s lunch breaks or forget it. People ask me out, but I put them off because right now, I don’t want to take time from the kids.”

This struggle for time is chronic, Larkins says, and the source of consternation from her mother and four sisters, all of whom are homemakers.

“I’ve had a lot of resistance from the family front,” Larkins says during a stop at the spectacular home her company is building in Corona del Mar. At times, she says, “my husband resented it taking time away from my children and felt that I was not getting enough recognition and people would use me my whole life in business.”

Her sisters lecture her about leaving her children in the care of others. And Larkins says her mom, who was married and having kids by 17, discouraged her from attending college and clucks with disapproval in rare long-distance calls--so rare Mary doesn’t even know her parents’ unlisted telephone number.

“They are so out of touch with the workplace,” Larkins says, “that when I start talking about what’s going on with my job, it’s like they tune out. ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh.’ ”

Her parents, Ken and Judith Steinkoenig, counter that they do not disapprove of their third daughter’s interest in business, nor of her working in construction. They say one of their other five daughters served in the Navy and forestry service before settling down to have children.

“That may be Mary’s impression, but our other daughters have worked, too,” says Larkins’ father, who retired from jobs in the paint and chemical field in Southern California and relocated to Missouri. He currently helps as a volunteer to build local churches.

“I always thought the girls shouldn’t be working Moms, “ Larkins’ mother Judith adds. . . . “But Mary’s the type she’s always wanted to be a working woman.”

The sticking point appears to be working parenthood. “I think the kids need their mom. They miss her when they can’t see her. . . .” Judith Steinkoenig says.

It is a point not lost on Larkins. But because she had more marketability at a time when her husband wanted to change professions, she says, she dropped out of college and continued working full time so he could return to school to pursue writing. He left that to work for the steel manufacturer.

No, Jim Larkins admits, he didn’t expect to marry a construction worker. And who marries with the expectation of separating?

“It’s just different things happen. Sometimes your other interests come out as you explore things in school,” he says. “I never really had any doubt in her, though. She’s always been kind of a go-getter.”

Like so many Southern Californians, their lives are a juggling act, in which driving inevitably seems to factor in.

“For her,” he says, “the biggest problem now is still the commute.”

Nancy Wride can be reached by e-mail at Nancy.Wride@latimes.com.