Legally Tough: “I’ll tell you what saved me, it was NAWIC.”

Originally, Tammy Crooks had no intention of entering the construction industry. She had graduated college and headed off to law school. But in her first year of studying to be a lawyer she met her future husband, Jack McLure, who owned a construction company. Even as she completed her legal education she was becoming more interested in construction. “I realized I didn’t want to be in an office all day,” she recalls. So, she jumped into world of construction with her husband by her side. She learned the business from the ground up, becoming proficient in AutoCAD and scheduling and managing projects. Their company specialized in design/build and completed numerous projects for a variety of clients including several exhibits for the Dallas Zoo. 

But then fate intervened. Tammy’s husband died unexpectedly and left her in a tailspin. Recovery was a tough road to follow. “I had to learn how to function again, not just in my personal life but in my professional life,” she says, “Jack and I had worked side by side for twenty-some years. Now all of a sudden my partner was not there. I had to try and pick up the pieces and move on. That was the one time in my life where I really thought, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t fathom going on without him’.”  

At her wits end, she found support from an unexpected source. “I’ll tell you what saved me, it was NAWIC. The outpouring of love and support I got from people I had never even met was amazing. It was so profound that even my family noticed and said they had never seen anything like it. Their support strengthened me personally because I now knew I had a fallback. Someone who was going to catch me. That really helped me to move on. I couldn’t imagine life without these people in my world.” 

Tammy is now a construction manager with Byrne Construction Services, of Fort Worth, Texas. The company specializes in municipal buildings and built the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. Tammy’s career has come full circle as she is about to shift into risk management for Byrne where she will use her legal background to negotiate contracts with owners, work with bonding companies, and navigate changes to terms. 

Looking back over her career, she remembers some of the biggest challenges she has had to overcome. “I think a lot of it was being a woman. When I came into the industry 28 years ago there weren’t a lot of women and not many doing what I was doing,” she recalls. “I had to overcome the stereotype of being a woman. I had to overcompensate by being tough and forceful and aggressive just so I could be heard. It’s not so bad now, partly because of the industry changing and partly because I have built a reputation. Learning construction was a challenge.” 

Her company has had her back as well. “My employer is 100 percent supportive. I asked the COO to let me give back and become the South Central Region Director for NAWIC. He asked me, ‘Well, do you want to do it?’ I said, ‘I have to.’ He repeated, ‘But do you want to?’ It turns out Byrne has always had someone involved with NAWIC from the beginning—supporting networking and helping you finding your place in the industry.” 

She adds that some of the best advice she has received is to be adaptable. “Others talk about resilience, but for me it boils down to being adaptable. Being able to pivot when there’s a roadblock—and there are always roadblocks. Think outside the box. Come at a problem in non-traditional way. Don’t worry about titles. Get the experience. You could call me the janitor, and I wouldn’t care.” 

Despite much success, being tough is still part of daily life, she explains, “I have to be tough when I am challenged, whether by a person or a situation. Grit plus tenacity equals toughness. Rolling with the punches. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on. That’s when you know you’re tough.” 

She describes an example, “I was a building a courthouse for a county. They had a construction person overseeing the project for the county. Anything and everything would be wrong in his view. I took it for a while. One day I overheard him saying, ‘They won’t be done on time and workmanship has been terrible.’ I came around the corner and said, ‘The work seemed to be good for all your bosses. Show me where we haven’t done it right.” He didn’t have anything to say. But to be clear, I wasn’t standing up for myself, I was standing up for my people.” 

Tammy believes she has seen progress for women having careers in construction. “I think it’s changed a lot because we are levelling the field. We’re not scarce on job sites. A lot of our project coordinators are women. I don’t think it’s as tough anymore because people my age and older have paved the way. In the trades it’s tougher.” 

She continues, “As women we can level the playing field by being sponges and becoming experts so that even if you’re questioned you know the answers. I try to teach younger people if you want to do something, do it well. Don’t be as good as me, be better than me. Try to be the smartest person in the room. That’s actually good advice for either gender, but especially for women. That’s how I did it. If I didn’t know the answer I would go find it. It raises your credibility.” 

As she reflects on her career, she describes who helped her the most. “My husband was the most influential person in my career. He showed me that nothing is impossible. Roadblocks are just something to climb or go around. People don’t care about your feelings in construction. You have got to be able to take criticism. But don’t let someone else dictate what your success is. Always strive to be better tomorrow than you are today. It’s hard but that’s how I’ve done it.”