Mid-States Concrete Industries celebrates Women in Construction Week (March 6 – 12) by highlighting women on our team making their mark in the construction industry.
Today we feature Safety Manager Tracy Miller. Tracy has been on the Mid-States team for eight-and-a-half years. In her role, she oversees all things safety. From providing safety training to all new team members during orientation to regular plant and field audits on safety, housekeeping, and compliance to writing and implementing processes and constantly updating Mid-States Concrete’s safety procedures to keep all of our team members safe, Tracy is our go-to person.
Prior to joining the Mid-States team, Tracy worked as a tech on the line at Lear. While there, she got heavily involved with the Union, which then pushed her to get even more involved and led her to going to school to get a bachelor’s degree in human resources. When she joined the Mid-States team, it was in an administrative assistant role that helped both HR and production.
In 2016, her role started to evolve more to the safety side of things and she helped to create a safety team. This allowed for more audits and compliance, as well as more training out on the plant floor. Currently, she and her team are working on revamping work instructions and processes to find efficiencies.
“I love that it is different every day so I don’t just come in every day and do data entry or whatever,” she said. “There is always something going on.”
Tracy’s favorite part of her job is completing safety audits because she always learns something, especially if she goes out in to the field because it is different from her day-to-day at the plant. She said it is challenging to make sure she is up to date on all the regulations with everything constantly updating or changing.
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has never really bothered Tracy. In fact, she hardly ever notices she’s the only woman around even though she rarely runs into another woman in the field. However, she has noticed when she gets mad or frustrated, it is sometimes perceived differently than if a man gets mad or frustrated.
“I’m just passionate about my work,” she said.
As far as advice Tracy would give to others looking to get in to the industry: keep your mind open to learn from others and listen, and don’t take things personally. If someone breaks a rule, it isn’t that they dislike you, it’s that they were distracted and weren’t focused on what they were doing. Being safe is thinking with intent, doing the right thing when nobody else is around.
“You have to have a lot of patience in safety,” she said.
