Mel Baiser, Co-Founder of Helm Construction Solutions
In this Q&A interview, Mel talks about how their early career in the trades transitioned into helping design and build companies develop healthier and more prosperous businesses.
Mel Baiser (they/them) is the Co-Founder and Director of Vision and Strategy at Helm Construction Solutions. After years working as a carpenter and engaging in the early movement around building science, Mel saw the need for better processes and communication within the residential construction industry. In this interview, Mel talks about why they entered the trades, advice for new tradespeople, why construction is important for addressing climate justice, and how their company is helping to create better workplace cultures that result in more viable companies.
Lana Melonakos-Harrison: Before you started Helm, you were a carpenter, a weatherization installer, and a project manager. How did you get into the trades in the first place?
Mel Baiser: I am a seventh-generation Vermonter from a family of builders and farmers, so it’s kind of in my blood. I grew up very low-income, and I ended up being the first in my family to go to college. After graduating with a sociology degree, spending some time living and working in Central America, and then doing community organizing in the Bay Area, a friend of mine asked me one day to help demo a bathroom they were working on. I had been a house painter all through high school, so it wasn’t my first time using tools or working with my hands, but that experience had an impact on me. I remember looking at the bare studs when we were done and saying, that was so fun and satisfying. We had a goal and we went out and achieved our goal, which is not something you experience a lot in organizing. I left the project that day having made the decision to become a carpenter. I worked my way onto a job site and got myself hired as an apprentice carpenter in San Francisco.
LMH: Were there particular types of homes and projects you were working on at the time?
MB: I have mostly been in the residential market doing a lot of high-performance renovations and new construction. I got really engaged in building science in my early 20s over the decade I spent in California, and after moving back to Vermont I became BPI and Passive House certified. I hopped around to different companies in the Bay Area and since it was San Francisco at the height of gentrification, there were many fancy old Victorians, most of which were being turned into beautiful modern homes. I had mixed feelings about the work, but it was a lot of fun learning the craft and getting to have a hand in all the different trades from framing to tiling. At a certain point, though, I realized that what I was enjoying the most was learning about the processes, organization, and communication involved in bringing a project from design through to completion. So, I ended up taking night classes at California State University East Bay and got a degree in Construction Management while also working full time in the trades.
LMH: Tell me more about the challenges and rewards of those early days on job sites.
MB: I’ve always had to be a strong advocate for myself in life and I think the primary reason I was hired is because I was confident and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Once I got on the job site, I made myself indispensable. It helped that I had house-painting experience, so I was comfortable around ladders, heights, and hand tools. One thing I often say to young people who are trying to get into this industry or to women, trans, or nonbinary folks who are hoping to enter the trades later in life, is to spend a summer working on a construction site; volunteer with Habitat for Humanity or even on a friend or family member’s home. This will build your comfort level with tools and your familiarity with a job site, which goes a long way toward increasing your confidence and legitimacy during an interview. Even though it shouldn’t be this way, as women, trans, and nonbinary people you often have to be the most hardworking and most reliable employee on the crew in order to counteract the misogynist views you might face. When you are dealing with people on a job site who are close-minded, you have to figure out who your allies are and build good relationships with them so they have your back. In addition, I’ve watched many cisgendered men in construction wreck their bodies over the years and it dawned on me that there were many times that men were not practicing the best way to move materials or manage things. Sometimes having folks on the job site whose bodies are built differently will help push a company culture to be more mindful of people’s bodies in general. This is just one of the many benefits of diversifying the trades.
LMH: How did you eventually start Helm and what was the motivation for that?
MB: After going back to school for construction management, I spent many years doing everything from project management to estimating and sales, going from one company to the next. On both coasts, I kept running into the same challenges and seeing the same things happen over and over again. I kept seeing things break down in the process over poor planning, bad communication, and disorganization. But because I wasn’t in a position of ownership or leadership, it was hard to create enough of a change to make a difference. I had an epiphany moment right around the time my wife gave birth to our son, and decided to start my own company with the premise of finding builders and design-build firms who were aligned with my values and help them improve their business systems and get better at client management, sales and estimating, and project management. The company, Beiser Construction Management, was born out of my own frustrations with the industry and my belief that we could do “construction” better.
In 2016, Kate Stephenson, who was the outgoing Executive Director of Yestermorrow, and I decided to partner and rebrand as Helm. We both come from families of tradespeople. We both love building. We’re both engaged in movements around climate change and social justice and knowing that construction was a significant contributor to CO2 emissions and global warming, we felt like the building world was strategic as an industry. So, we created a firm that works with the companies that want to lead around climate justice, acknowledging that climate change is a byproduct of a failed economic system that is exploitative and that depends on institutions like white supremacy and patriarchy. We want to support the business resilience of those committed to building energy-efficient and low-carbon homes—companies who want to provide good workplace culture and great client service, and contribute in an impactful way to their communities.
What’s most important to us is that these companies survive and thrive as businesses so they can continue to bring this leadership to our industry and our movements. There are a lot of people out there who are amazing tradespeople but may be what we call “accidental business owners.” They went into the trades because they love the craft and working with their hands, and all of a sudden they are managing a multimillion dollar company with dozens of employees, but they don’t necessarily have the skills or resources to excel at the business part. Right now, we’re in a moment where we see construction as an opportunity to address a lot of different challenges in our society. For example, the labor-shortage crisis: We need to rapidly scale up the workforce to meet demand, so why wouldn’t we be considering large portions of the population who have historically been overlooked in this sector? We need to be recruiting and attracting women, trans, and nonbinary folks, people of color, immigrants, and young people. We need more companies and healthy and inclusive cultures to support these new hires. Diversity is not only proven to be good for business, but challenging toxic workplace culture is good for everyone.
LMH: What are some examples of encouraging experiences you’ve had with the companies you work with?
MB: After launching Helm, we were approached by several companies run by women and trans people seeking resources to support the education of their cisgender male co-workers and employees. We realized there wasn’t much out there on this topic, so one of the first projects Kate spearheaded was creating a gender toolkit for construction-business owners. Since then, our team has organized anti-oppression workshops for clients and helped to launch the Diversity Caucus and anti-racism working group within the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA). This year, we piloted a new training titled “Building a Healthy Culture: The Dumpster Fire of Patriarchy”, which is intentionally a little bit controversial to get people’s attention. It is meant to be a workshop geared toward cisgender men in the industry to start having conversations about patriarchy, misogyny, and how these play out in our industry. One of the important takeaways from the spring workshop was learning how aspects of toxic masculinity not only hurt organizations but also negatively impact men. We see this show up in a variety of ways from not being able to maintain good boundaries, challenges with practicing self-care and stress management, or an inability to ask for help. These in turn are things that get companies in trouble where maybe they’ve overcommitted or haven’t managed client expectations well. Right now, when hiring is so challenging, I’ve been impressed with our clients who decided to really invest in their people rather than see employees as replaceable. This might look like providing additional training and mentorship, or even professional coaching and leadership development to their team. All of this helps to create healthier company cultures, which has the bonus impact of building more viable and prosperous businesses.
In terms of specific clients, I’ve been encouraged by the efforts of New Frameworks, which is a worker-owned cooperative in Vermont founded and led primarily by queer and trans folks, women, and immigrants. They have always been bold in their vision of climate justice and have taken on the critical challenge of investing in apprentices and training—particularly for those underrepresented in the trades—because they want to build the world they are working towards. Bringing in apprentice-level people requires a lot of effort and resources but no one else is going to do this work for our industry. Another company that inspires me is Maine Passive House. The owner recognized early on that to have a resilient company, he needed to invest in emerging leadership. We’ve spent many years collaborating to support the systems, hiring, on-boarding, and training of multiple women who now provide much of the leadership at the company and are doing great work to increase the participation of BIPOC, women, nonbinary, and trans people in the trades through their volunteer effort We Built This.
Photos courtesy of Mel Baiser
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