Designing the Future: Mallory Weber on Transportation, Teamwork, and Growing in the A/E/C Industry

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Welcome to another episode of the Engineering Influence podcast by the American
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Council of Engineering Companies.
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My name is Shreya Jain and we're coming to you live from the ACEC Fall Conference in San Diego.
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I have with me Mallory Weber, one of our Young Professional of the Year Award winners.
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Mallory, congratulations on winning and thank you so much for being here.
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We appreciate your time. Thanks for having me.
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Absolutely. So let's dive right into it. What inspired you to pursue a career engineering?
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So I loved Legos growing up, which is, you know, great that a lot of times that's
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not a girl toy to have, right?
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So I'm very thankful to my parents that that was not like, oh,
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you can't play with that.
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But on top of that, my dad was in construction.
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Yeah. And that's kind of right out of high school, didn't go to college,
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started in construction, kind of grew in that career and ended up starting his own business.
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And so a lot of times I was jumping in this truck going
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to do a you know cost proposal at someone's house seeing the
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job site so I just from a young age really
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like seeing like something being built you know
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I'm kind of a weirdo and like building Ikea furniture that's weird at all I
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think that is what we need most people don't like building Ikea furniture but
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that's something I enjoy actually so I volunteer for if somebody buys something
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I'm like I'll come put it together so you know just like seeing things built
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and that kind of grew into...
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You know, wanting to pursue something in engineering. I didn't quite know what,
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but I also grew up 35 minutes from the University of Illinois in Champaign.
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And so, you know, that's a big civil engineering school.
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So it was kind of like why go elsewhere when it's right there in my backyard?
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I grew up a huge Illini fan. So yeah.
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Absolutely. And so what was the catalyst that helped you realize what you wanted to do in engineering?
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I, you know, like a lot of people had no idea what that even meant, engineering. Yeah.
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I feel a lot of people said, you should be an engineer, you're good at math,
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you know, those types of things. Yeah. It's like when you can talk and people
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say you should be a lawyer. Right.
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Oh, I can do math. Okay. So I had gotten one of those books that tells you like
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what each major is. Right.
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So looking through the different engineering ones and civil one definitely stood out to me.
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At first I thought structural because that's what everyone thinks,
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the civil, right, is bridges.
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So I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to go build bridges. And then after my first
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year in school, I had an internship.
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And kind of dabbled in a little bit of everything in civil engineering and realized,
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structures was not for me.
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That, you know, those are like very specific people that are really good at their job.
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And I realized quickly that I could not do structures.
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So that led me to more of the transportation roadway design type of things.
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And I kind of liked how typically.
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They're the people also leading the projects and kind of bringing all the different
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disciplines together, which I kind of thrive in a little bit more is like pulling
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a team together and liking that team aspect.
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Yeah, would you say that's your favorite part of being a transportation engineer
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is the interdisciplinary aspect of it?
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Yeah, I think that's definitely one of them. I kind of came from like a sports
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background growing up and so teamwork and all that comes natural and that's,
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I actually prefer that versus kind of working in a silo by myself.
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I don't thrive in that. So it's definitely something that makes me enjoy my
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job a lot more is kind of like having those relationships and how like we're
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solving a problem together kind of thing, all of us against the world.
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So yeah, I think that's so important is knowing what your work style is to actually
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be in a career that you enjoy and can thrive in and figure out how that benefits the community.
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Because like I had a teacher in high school once tell us, you know,
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if an extrovert becomes an accountant, they're not going to last in the job
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for more than a year and a half.
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And when you say that you work better in a team, how did you figure out that
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that was your work style?
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I don't know that I did figure it out. I think it just came,
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you know, sometimes you just gravitate towards the thing that you're kind of
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already oriented towards, right?
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So like I said, But I think that was one of the things in the internship,
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seeing the structural engineers,
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they kind of were off by themselves, you know, looking up their code,
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okay, it's this thing, this is what it is, you know, not to say it's easy, but very hard.
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But it was a lot more like, okay, you go do this versus like,
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you know, having that collaboration and whatnot.
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I do think, like, without knowing it subconsciously, you just end up in the
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place that you're like, oh, yeah, this is a good fit. Yeah.
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I think it just kind of worked out, which is nice. That's amazing. Yeah.
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So, transportation engineer, what has been the most gratifying project that
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you've worked on? Oh, that's... So far, that is a person.
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I think for kind of a multitude of reasons, it was an Illinois tollway project
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for I-490, which is a new highway being built on the west side of O'Hare.
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I guess one of the major reasons is in Illinois, typically you're not working on a new road.
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Usually you're only, you know, fixing what got ruined in winter, right?
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It's a lot of patching and, you know, there are bigger projects,
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but it's usually of an existing road.
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Especially in the chicago area so that was
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interesting because you know it was this
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is a brand new you know there's no road here
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correctly and we're putting one through and so
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that had a lot of challenges i learned a lot through that and
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you know coordinating with the airport railroads there's just pretty much
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anything that could be involved in a project was involved there
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on that project i also got heavily involved in kind
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of the them modeling 3d modeling space and because
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it was a pilot project for the tollway of you know
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delivering the 3D model as a contract document
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for the contractor to build off of that and
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so I also learned a ton from that of like even contractually how that works
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of you know where does that fit in our spec book and those types of things so
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I think I just I learned a lot and it was a larger scale project so it was it was very cool to work on.
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So I heard, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that Vim was going away and
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being replaced by digital twins, right?
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I think it's more just like a terminology thing. You know, depending on state
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to state, person to person, they all kind of call it a different thing.
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But yeah, that they're, you know, kind of a similar terminology there.
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Okay. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah.
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But switching gears a little bit, what advice would you have for the current
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cohort of engineers coming in. Ooh, that's tough.
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Very different world than when I entered, you know, 12 years ago where there was no hybrid schedule.
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Like that was not even a consideration.
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I love my work from home days. Yeah. I don't know what to tell you.
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You know, and I'm someone that likes the flexibility.
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Yeah. So I'm glad for the changes and I think it was necessary.
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You know, obviously the pandemic was horrible, but without it,
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I don't know that our industry would be where we are now with that flexibility of schedule.
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It was very rigid in a lot of places, and maybe that wasn't all firms, but,
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I think it pushed us forward out of necessity.
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And so I guess just trying to figure out for those younger engineers,
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like what works for you in that balance?
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You know, do you thrive more in office and you're fine going in,
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you know, like, or no, you do really well at home, you know,
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because I do think that being in office when you are younger is extremely helpful.
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You know, it's not, it's certainly not like you
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can't learn things without it but I can
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remember early on you may not be in meetings
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or like in conversations but you're overhearing things
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that people are talking about that may not pertain to you but that you are learning
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about or can ask about later right and so like how do you replace that experience
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when you're at home maybe it's asking to be involved in a meeting even if you're
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not you know directly related to that but you're learning from that.
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And so I guess kind of like advocating on how do you learn and like moving up
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in those ways that are harder in a hybrid schedule.
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Yeah, that's so interesting that you bring that up. Like what would you say
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that, or sorry, would you say that being in office at the start of your career
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helped you out in a way that maybe the current generation would not have if
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they had like a hybrid schedule?
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I definitely think so. And that's not to say that like everyone should be in office.
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Right, yeah. But there is something there that you just can't replicate, right?
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Like that natural, I have a question, you turn around and someone's right there
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at a desk and you can quickly ask that question versus like,
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hey, are you available? Can we schedule a Teams meeting? Yeah.
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But that might be a good thing too, where you're not interrupting that person
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and you can schedule a time that works for both of you.
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So I do think that you can't fully replace that in-office work.
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With that said though, I think it's just setting up ways within your team to make things work.
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We certainly are not perfect, but one thing that we have implemented that we've
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liked a lot at our firm is we do 10 a.m.
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Check-in every single day. And it doesn't mean that you aren't communicating
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outside of that time, but we have that specific time that we all are on a Teams
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call and you know So I'm going to be talking to another person at this company
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at this time, right? Yeah.
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And so if you... Any questions that you have can get answered.
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Right. And even just like... Verifications that you need.
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Talking about what you did over the weekend. Yeah. Getting some of that interaction
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that you don't get when you're not in office.
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So yeah, I think there is the necessity, I think, to still be in office in at
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least some of that time there. Very true. Yeah.
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How did you get involved in ACC? see when i was probably four or five years
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into my career i kind of would be asked to go to things more as like a fill-in
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person like i can't go to this now can you yeah can you go to this and so.
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Starting to go to these like and you learn like oh
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this is kind of how you connect with people at other firms and while sometimes
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we're competing like it is such an ecosystem of firms where we all need each
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other as well right so I think seeing that made me realize I do need to get
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more involved in those as my career grew and then at the firm I'm at now I'm
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they are very supportive like if you want to go to something you go you know
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like that's super important not only for yourself but for our firm brand also
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and yeah getting yourself out there so.
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It does help that a lot of the ac events are like five minutes from our office
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so we can just jump over there for lunch but yeah i've very much liked you know
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hearing from even like in the chicago area,
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like we'll have different county people coming in and kind of updating about
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their program or IDOT, tollway.
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There's a lot of different programming that helps kind of keep you involved
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and not the same thing over and over again, right?
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Yeah. I think that's like so important when your company is just able to say, you want to go, go.
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You want to take the session, take the session. Right. It really helps you get
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a feel for what others are doing,
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for how you can be better at your job and just interacting with people outside
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of your bubble and outside of your sphere it really makes a big difference yeah
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and I kind of scoffed at it early in my career but the more I'm getting older
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the more I see that it's true people talk about like the zipper method of like.
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You need to connect with people like earlier in your career that are at your
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age group because then as you grow, they're also growing and they may be a vice president somewhere.
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They may be the lead at an agency somewhere, but you're meeting that person
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younger and building that connection and kind of moving up with them.
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Right. So it's important to meet people above you and below you as well.
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But I think kind of keeping that in mind that you never know where,
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what event you're going to meet someone that like, oh, that's 10 years on the road. I met you. Yeah.
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You know, talking about your kid's basketball game, you know, so.
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That's amazing. I think conferences like this facilitate that in such a good
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way because they encourage conversation and they have all these networking breaks
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and you get to meet all these exhibitors and everything.
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Yeah. Yeah. And we have a great contingent here from Illinois.
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Actually we all went to dinner last night over on Coronado so that was a lot
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of fun too getting you know it's people you know but maybe not as kind of like
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deeply as normal so it was good to kind of get to interact with people there
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so um do you have any final thoughts as we wrap up,
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uh no it's been good this is my first time at the
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national conference here so it's been a good experience and it's you know really
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well run and excuse you know get out and see San Diego too so absolutely thanks
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for having me congratulations on your award again yeah thank you this has been
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another episode of the engineering influence podcast don't forget to like and
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subscribe we'll see you next time.