Jane Gowing

Who was my best mentor?

I am very lucky to have my mother as a pioneer in this industry.  She was a medical doctor by trade, then self-taught construction project management/engineering when she and my step-father started a mechanical contracting company.  She blazed a path for women in construction and taught me that there were 2 important things – always go to a meeting prepared and know what you know and what you don’t know and be confident with that.

How did I get to where I am now?

I started at the bottom and did everything I could possibly do to learn the industry first hand.  So, from shop clean up to inventory to drafting to estimating to project managing to starting my own company to expanding with employees to building a new office facility to growing and now looking at succession planning, with some payroll and accounting thrown in where needed at the start.  There was nothing I didn’t want to try so that I understood what it meant and what it took to be good at it.  Then I looked at what I was good at and focused on finding good people to do the things I couldn’t do well.  It was a process of hard work and drive to achieve more, partnered with finding the right people to work with you.

There have been many milestones in the business over the last 20 years, but one of the most satisfying was winning the Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003.   The satisfying part was not the winning, although that was a great honour.  It was the requirement to submit an explanation of why I deserved to win.  I spent a lot of time looking back at the 5 years we had been in business and all the accomplishments that occurred during that time.   It was a bit of a shock to see all the things that had happened.   You get so focused on moving forward, and what you need to do to have a successful business, that it takes something like this to make you stop and turn around and recognize what you have accomplished in that time.