Top Women In Construction 2020: Companies to Watch

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WINNER: Debra Hilmerson, Hilmerson Safety

The same competitive drive that served Debra Hilmerson well as a University of Minnesota women’s basketball player (and team captain) has made her a winning entrepreneur as founder, president and CEO of Minneapolis-based Hilmerson Safety. Hilmerson entered the industry while in college, working a summer as a laborer for Hanson Spancrete on the Target Center and Mall of America parking ramp projects.

A career turning point happened when she was picked to represent Spancrete on a safety committee for the mall project. She later became the firm’s director of field operations and safety, and later a safety specialist at 3M.

In 1992, Minneapolis-based Mortenson Construction hired Hilmerson as a safety coordinator and, over the next seven years, she rose to safety director for Mortenson’s national industrial division. In 2001, she left Mortenson and founded Hilmerson Safety.

Hilmerson recalls that, as soon as she entered the construction field as a college student laborer, “I could see we needed people in the field who could provide solutions to common problems we see over and over.” Hilmerson has put that insight into practice, focusing on improving job site safety and developing three products that have had significant impact.

They include a patented Current Cover that allows construction workers to work safely around energized outlets, switches and other electrical fixtures; an easy-to-install steel Safety Rail System to replace the makeshift wooden guardrails erected at multi-floor job sites; and a Barrier Fence System to provide better security around job site perimeters. (The latter two products are patent-pending.)

Hilmerson says she has built her company on “always trying to provide solutions that would be reasonable and achievable.” All three of her inventions fit that category — solutions that “keep people productive while still being in compliance with OSHA standards.”

Hilmerson has provided safety solutions to four major stadium projects since 2018, including the Allianz soccer field in St. Paul, and a new stadium for Cincinnati’s new major league soccer team. The company enjoyed 25 percent growth last year and hopes to double that in 2020, with a backlog of new orders.

“I have found my niche,” Hilmerson says. “I’m an entrepreneur at heart.  I’ve worked in the field and worked with the executives, so I ‘get’ the business sides and the field side of the industry.”

Finalists

Elisabeth Ennenga, Quad E Cos.

Elizabeth Ennenga was working for Target Corp. in merchandising and purchasing when she developed the itch to leave the corporate world and “take my entrepreneurial spirit and blend it with my business knowledge.” In 2014 Ennenga launched Quad E Cos. as a solo operation.

With her husband, Justin, an excavator, running the field operation, Ennenga started running Quad E full time in the fall of 2016. In the early stages, she built the company by going to pre-bid meetings, joining the Association of Women Contractors and starting to meet people. It paid off. With 50 percent annual growth five years in a row, Quad E has grown into a multimillion-dollar company with a dozen employees.

As a business co-owner and mother of three children, Ennenga emphasizes the importance of work-life balance for her employees. “It’s incredibly important to us to enable our employees to attend their kids’ sporting events and concerts. We try hard not to work weekends, so everybody can enjoy that time.”

Meghan Huber, Welsh Construction

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Meghan Huber originally planned to become a geologist, but an assistant project manager job with a K.C. construction company right out of college led to a change in plans.

Back in the early ’80s, she was one of relatively few women in the country working in construction management. “I fell in love with the whole process of seeing something constructed out of nothing, and I had some good mentors.” After marriage brought her to the Twin Cities about 20 years ago, Huber worked in project management for Stahl Construction and then J.E. Dunn before joining Welsh in 2015.

In 2007, Huber became one of Minnesota’s first LEED-accredited professionals, and she has developed and taught LEED training seminars. Over the course of her career, Huber has received 12 Awards of Excellence from construction and real estate industry organizations, including the Minnesota Construction Association, Minnesota Commercial Real Estate Women, and NAIOP.

Jamey Flannery, Flannery Construction

When Jamey Flannery was growing up in St. Paul, much of the dinner table conversation revolved around the family construction business her father, Jerry Flannery, founded in 1980. She spent a lot of her non-school time helping out. “I cleaned a lot of job sites and moved a lot of bricks.” Fifteen years ago, she became a paid employee, thoroughly learning the business in “pretty much all of the jobs in the office,” she recalls.

Since purchasing the company in 2015, Flannery has helped double the annual revenue of one of Minnesota’s few woman-owned and led general contractors increase revenue by more than 50 percent.

In her off-hours, she’s been active in mentoring several young women through the St. Paul Central High School Scholarship Foundation (she is a Central alumna), where she is also a board member. Mentoring is important, she notes, and “we make a concerted effort to make sure our hiring practices reflect that.”

Elissa Merritt, ATR Commercial Flooring

Working for an hourly wage doing physical labor isn’t the easiest or most secure way to make a living. So, to make their workers’ lives a bit easier, ATR Commercial Flooring has “broken the mold” for standard subcontractor-employer relationships, according to owner Elissa Merritt. As the company has extended its reach beyond residential sales into commercial sectors, ATR has converted a number of its contractors into employees and created a way for those workers to move into sales, training and supervisory roles.

“We have created a career path that goes past the job into the long term and even retirement.” In addition, rather than being paid by the hour, all of ATR’s installers are on salary, says Elissa, who joined the company in 2010, a decade after her husband, Ron Merritt, founded it. She started as an office manager and is now the sole owner.

ATR has experienced a growth spurt within the past year since making two crucial decisions — focusing on commercial work and selling its own flooring material.

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