Heidi Aliski
Heidi Aliski is the project manager and Anette Balestrand is the assistant project manager of Erland Construction, based in Burlington, Mass.
Aliski started at Erland 12 years ago, joining the company as an assistant project manager.
Prior to 2007, she worked for a general contractor and a few architectural firms — having studied architectural engineering in college.
She was promoted to project manager in 2017 after successfully completing several complex projects and demonstrating her astounding leadership skills.
Balestrand joined Erland a little more than a year-and-a-half ago. In that time, she has moved up through the ranks — starting out as a project engineer, transitioning to project engineer II, and ultimately taking on the role of assistant project manager.
Prior to joining Erland, she worked for an architectural products company and an exterior fabricators company.
Anette Balestrand
While the challenges faced on a job are experienced by both sexes, for women in construction it can be difficult to work in a field that is predominately male.
These issues can be overcome by building trust and attention to detail, which is exactly what Aliski and Balestrand did on a recent independent school project.
The duo completed a 20,250sf phased demolition and construction of a building that remained fully operational on an occupied school campus in Concord, Mass.
Having teamed up for the first time, they worked hard to develop how they would communicate — establishing their roles and responsibilities while understanding that as a team, they needed to remain flexible, learn from each other, and step up whenever needed.
They took the time to listen to one another and worked together to resolve issues more efficiently because of these communication efforts.
This is the same approach they took with the project team and the client — ultimately building collaboration and strengthening the team’s overall communication.
