Construction Champions 2023: Rose Boleen

Rose Boleen has played a key role on projects in San Francisco-based Swinerton’s recently launched mass timber division, Timberlab.

Following her college internship and graduation, she worked on the Lincoln City, Oregon, Police Department project as her first full-time assignment. A 17,500-square-foot, two-story ground-up structure consisting of steel, concrete, and mass timber with cross-laminated timber shear walls and floors, the project presented a number of challenges, including a tight building footprint where there was only room for a single crawler crane, and the need to switch between a steel beam and a CLT wall panel.

Despite a two-hour commute each way, Boleen’s eagerness to learn and her flexibility in being assigned out-of-town work helped to ensure the project’s success. She rounded out her early career with a rigorous six-month assignment coordinating the design completion and international procurement for the RNew residence halls project at the University of California Santa Cruz’s Kresge College campus, which will house 311 students when completed in 2025 and consists of four full floors of CLT construction including floors, shear walls, and interior columns.

“The curiosity and earthly reward that comes from being part of the ‘how’ is why I choose construction. How do days, months, even years of discussions, setbacks, handshakes, personalities, frustrations, builders, materials, budgets and phone calls … how do I take these puzzle pieces and strategically assemble them into something groundbreaking?” - Rose Boleen, Assist Project Manager