Reeves Construction’s Emily Talbert Shares Her Women of Asphalt Trajectory
BY Sandy Lender
Reeves Construction’s Emily Talbert shares Woman of Asphalt Trajectory
With a Master of Arts degree in Communication from Queens University of Charlotte, Emily Talbert dove into the asphalt industry with Reeves Construction Company in January 2020. She began her career as the communications coordinator/university recruiter for Reeves out of the corporate office in Duncan, South Carolina.
Since then, Talbert has sampled a variety of the jobs and career tracks the asphalt and aggregates industry has to offer within the Reeves family. Emily currently serves as the account manager for the Reeves Blacksburg Quarry located in Blacksburg, South Carolina, and she shares with our audience what it looks like to be a successful woman of asphalt.
“If it’s something that’s important to you, you have to make the time. Set your intentions. Set your boundaries.”—Emily Talbert
Growing up, one of Emily’s most influential role models was her father, an electrical engineer. He encouraged her to venture into the engineering field as well, and Talbert landed there, while not through her education, but through industry connections. With manufacturing and construction sharing similarities in their goals toward efficiency and optimization, a personal connection was shared between her father’s company and Reeves, which led Talbert to the communications coordinator position in late 2019.
Meet Two Women of Asphalt: CAT Scholarship Recipients for 2024
“Someone internal to the company had previously worked with my dad and shared the newly created position with me,” she said. “It was word of mouth.”
We all know the importance of using a multi-layered approach to bringing workers to the construction industry at large—and to our companies specifically—and Talbert began with recruitment as one of her mandates. She worked on Reeves’ social media presence to support recruiting while also taking lead on recruitment and structuring of their summer internship program. She helped establish, and then maintain, relationships in the local communities, high schools and trade schools to bring new workers to the fold.
“On the corporate internal communications side, our organization requested newsletters and news blasts for employees,” Talbert said. She accepted that responsibility to design, edit and publish the quarterly publication by the name of The Front Loader. (See the sidebar “Communicate Your Skills” for more.)
Left to Right: Victoria Taffet, corporate social responsibility director, Colas USA; Latrell Cates, human resources business partner/EEO, Reeves; and Talbert enjoy a moment at the Women of Asphalt booth during a trade show.
Encouraging WofA
When asked what about the industry surprised her or was unexpected in those early days, Talbert said, “There were very few women. I often wondered to myself ‘why are there not more women?’” Reeves, and its parent company, Colas USA, have made great strides to change that.
Colas USA launched a program in 2021 called WE USA to recognize and encourage the women in their subsidiaries. The WE USA Women of Influence program is a peer-nominated recognition program whereby employees can shine a light on women thought-leaders who are making a difference in the companies under the Colas umbrella.
What It Takes to Succeed as a Project Engineer in the Asphalt Industry
Colas also developed the Business Rotation Program (BRP), which launched in 2023. While this 24-month program allows anyone to “rotate” through different divisions in the Colas family to learn about different roles and gain hands-on experience with different job functions throughout the corporation, Talbert said they found a niche in using this program as a recruitment opportunity for females looking to get into the industry. The BRP offers three different six- to eight-month rotational assignments in project management, estimating and manufacturing. In the program, the participants are learning more than how to perform specific jobs. According to Colas, “they learn key skills such as professionalism, networking and how the various departments within our organization work together for the business.”
While her first position at Reeves as communications coordinator made excellent use of Talbert’s communication skills and degree, she knew she wanted to learn more about the industry. Mentor programs like WE USA sparked her own journey to explore more about operations.
While a mentee in the WE USA mentorship program, Talbert was exposed to the operations side of the business where she began “learning about what goes on out in the field and having a desire for boots on the ground, hands-on experience.” She moved to another division within Reeves to Augusta, Georgia, and worked with paving crews for nine and a half months on six different projects, including intersection improvement, commercial paving, and county and department of transportation (DOT) projects. She spoke with excitement of not just running the roller on base rock for a week, but of meeting density requirements for the project’s success. That January through September of 2022 was a crash course in project management.
“Everyone encouraged me and was so willing to teach me,” she said. “I also began to learn about estimating and helped bid projects for DOT lettings. This part of my journey was my opportunity to become a project engineer.”
Now Talbert serves as a mentor for any of the ladies who come to Greenville via the BRP.
Once a project engineer/estimator, Talbert was able to work in the field with paving crews and alongside the supervisors and foremen executing projects.
Employing New Skills
Once a project engineer/estimator, a role Talbert filled from January 2022 to December 2023, she was able to work in the field with paving crews and alongside the supervisors and foremen executing projects. In this capacity, she still needed her communication skills to keep projects moving, but she also honed analysis skills in market research and historical bid data; in production rates and unit costs; and in actual construction performance versus bid expectations.
“I handled cost reports, truck tickets, safety meetings, counting quantities,” she said, alongside preparing construction budgets by analyzing plans and specs, and putting together expected costs for each phase of a project. She was not just estimating and bidding county and DOT projects, but was also following through to ensure change orders and challenges were handled in a cost-efficient manner.
Talbert excelled in that role for about two years before she moved to her current position as an account manager and sales representative for the Reeves Blacksburg Quarry on the business development side. While being in the field with the paving crews was enjoyable, the bidding and estimating portion of her journey was not her favorite part of the industry. She shared that the experience, however, gave her skills and knowledge she can use in her current position, which she enjoys.
“Customers will call and if they don’t really know what they need, I can help them,” she said. “Having been in estimating, I can help them with all the pieces, like which aggregate will work for the spec they need to meet. I can help them figure tonnage, load count and haul rates.”
Meet a Woman of Asphalt: Zipp’s Asphalt & Sealcoating’s Brynn Zipp
She spoke fondly of the constant encouragement she receives in this new role from her current manager, Bryan Spach, who is the director of sales. “I want to explore more in a sales management role to help move the market over the next five years,” she said. “And with construction, there’s always room for improvement. There’s always something new to learn. New equipment, new technology, new training; there’s always an opportunity to do something new.”
Luckily for Talbert, Reeves and parent company Colas USA embrace sharing such innovation with employees. “If there’s a training opportunity, I want to be there,” she said. “Reeves and Colas put an emphasis on developing their employees. They invest in their people and want to see them succeed. We have become more innovative with training too.”
One innovative training opportunity that helped with her current role involved offering customer-facing sales training to the plant operators. By having account managers/sales representatives and plant operators in the same training session, both parties were able to see why and how tonnages, specifications and other factors were “sold” to the customer, as well as how the plant operators are a partner in successfully delivering the desired product to the customer. Overall, the idea of bringing sales and production together served both sides of the coin, and Talbert found such outside-the-box thinking beneficial.
As she grows with Reeves, Talbert also shows the work-life balance that women in the construction industry strive to achieve. She married her fiancé at the end of February and shared that they must set priorities for time away from the office. “If it’s something that’s important to you, you have to make the time. Set your intentions. Set your boundaries.”
For example, she found it to be more difficult to get herself to the gym to work out if she left that opportunity to after-work hours, so she makes it a priority to go before work. For the important things in life, “we have to train ourselves to make the time.”
For women seeking a career or advancement in the asphalt industry, stories like Talbert’s offer inspiration and only one of many blueprints. Check out the various routes women have taken to excel in our industry at the Women of Asphalt tab at www.TheAsphaltPro.com and reach out to editor Sandy Lender to share your inspiring story.