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One foot in jail? Challenges of construction supervision

How do you best communicate with residents and municipalities in civil engineering to avoid trouble and disputes? Annette Reinauer shares her experiences with us and talks about her work in construction supervision.

Political constraints and construction supervision

Working with municipalities in construction supervision is often challenging. This is usually not due to a lack of understanding of civil engineering, but rather to financial and political constraints. Annette Reinauer from the Schädel engineering firm in Weil der Stadt explained to us how best to deal with these constraints and with the residents.

No degree prepares you for this profession

Annette Reinauer is convinced that construction supervision can only be learned the hard way. There’s no training, continuing education, or even a degree program that prepares you for it. In municipal civil engineering, there are also the special features of working with the public sector and residents.

Reach out to residents and communicate clearly

The latter can usually be easily gained by informing them at meetings about the planned measures, their benefits, and their duration. Furthermore, Reinauer tells our host Florian, residents can often be persuaded to support the construction projects by offering them concrete benefits, such as the opportunity to renew their water supply.

Dealing with municipal developers

Dealing with municipal developers, however, is often more difficult. Especially in public construction projects, not only costs and deadline pressure play a role, but also political considerations. Reinauer and her colleagues are often faced with the problem that the civil engineering department is often unable to make many critical decisions itself.

Challenges in construction monitoring

Once everything’s finally settled, the utility companies often come along and suddenly want to replace their lines. In this episode of Asphalt Talk, Reinauer reveals how best to handle this and how to best protect yourself legally during construction monitoring.

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Attracting women to civil engineering and construction supervision

But the old cliché that being a construction supervisor always means you’re always in jail didn’t deter Reinauer, nor did the preponderance of men in the construction industry. She certainly hasn’t had any negative experiences as a woman. Find out how she managed this and what she believes is still needed to attract more women to civil engineering in the new episode of Asphalt Talk.