Jillian Fiandaca

I've been in the construction industry for 14 years, and I'm currently a Senior Project Manager working on the Terminal 3 expansion at O'Hare Airport. In this role, I'm in charge of all the financials - I essentially do all the change orders, estimate them to the owner for approval, get them approved, modify them with the sub, go through all of the change order details, and make sure we're submitting accurate pricing. It's my responsibility to control the cost for our general conditions and general requirements on the current project. Throughout my career, I've mainly worked on multifamily projects, and when I came to Clark, I switched to higher education and aviation work. My journey into construction started in high school when I took a building construction course and built a house for a year, learning how to build a house from the ground up. That experience really shaped my career trajectory. I was inspired by the idea of going to work and building something, changing and developing towns and municipalities, and just seeing the work complete and people using the space. I love seeing how a new structure or renovation changes the way people use it. One of my biggest achievements was a project I did in Evanston for student housing for Northwestern - it was a very tough project from a design standpoint, and things occurred that removed a lot of time out of the schedule. I was in charge of accelerating the job to get it finished on time so when school opened, we would be ready to move in all the kids. I got to finish 220 units and amenity inside and out in 3 months.