Vivian Martain PAVEs the Way, Puts People First

Date Posted: April 11, 2023

Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, Workforce,

by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum

“Intentionality, intentionality, intentionality.”

That was the reply that Vivian Martain, civil rights compliance officer for Millstone Weber, gave when asked for three words describing what it takes to be a truly inclusive contractor. She was part of an afternoon panel at MODOT’s annual Civil Rights Compliance and DBE Training  Symposium in Columbia on March 28th.

Tom Finan, Construction Forum co-founder/executive director was also on the panel. Finan and Forum Deputy Director/COO Diana Wilhold were the luncheon speakers for the event.

The first quarter of 2023 was a whirlwind of accolades and presentations for the “MW Communiversity” and the “Project PAVE” STEM education program that Martain designed and runs for Millstone Weber in conjunction with the I-270 North Project.

• Governor Mike Parson’s State of the State address to the Missouri General Assembly in Jefferson City on Jan. 18 recognized by Martain and the students participating in the project PAVE outreach.
• On March 14, Martain and Project PAVE presented at a session at the Design-Build Institute of America Transportation/Aviation Conference in Seattle.
• The week before the MoDOT symposium the Millstone Weber programs were recognized at the National Society of Black Engineers annual conference in Kansas City.

Everything Begins With People

Millstone Weber’s Communiversity (MWC) and “Project PAVE” STEM Initiative Program seeks to guide, educate, and support students attending identified St. Louis North County High Schools, as well as mentoring and aiding in the continued growth of DBEs in the area. It is designed to create an interest in the pursuit of heavy design, engineering, and construction careers.

MWC began as a byproduct of MoDOT and Millstone Weber’s partnership on the I-270 North Design-Build Project which first broke ground in the summer of 2020. At $278M, the I-270 North project is the largest single project MODOT has taken on in the past decade.

In Gov. Mike Parson’s office before the “State of the State”. Martain is second from left.

While these programs remain directly related to this ongoing project, MWC, and the STEM Initiative have grown into impactful programs which Millstone Weber plans to continue after the I-270 North Project is complete. For example, the MoDOT requirement on the project was for Millstone Weber to mentor one M/WBE contractor. In fact, over the duration of the project, the company has mentored four M/WBEs and plans to do more on projects going forward.

For Vivian Martain, everything begins and ends with people. She can tell you which young people in the Project PAVE program like pizza and toasted ravioli.

She tells of returning the laptop of a program participant to his home after he left it behind. The young man’s mother invited her in and she spent a couple of hours talking with them. “She kept telling me about how grateful she was for the program,” Martain said.

At the end of that time the young man, with his mom’s permission, took Martain to his bedroom where he showed her his elaborate computer setup and demonstrated a game in which players could build entire environments.  I asked him, ‘Where did you get this app?’ He said, ‘I wrote it.’ This kid is building what engineers are doing for a living,” she said.

“He loves doughnuts, he loves gaming, and he loves Project PAVE.”

“A STEM Program That Works”

In his State of the State address in January, Governor Parsons called Project PAVE,  “…a STEM program that works to mentor, teach and support students in North St. Louis County high schools. These students get to pursue interests in highway design, engineering, and construction.”

When Millstone Weber was submitting the proposal on I-270 North,  Thom Kuhn, MW CEO, asked Martain to come up with a program to address workforce and W/MBE support for the project’s neighbors. Kuhn told her that if the company won the project he wanted her to run the program. (“She was gonna stay whether we got 270 or not,” Kuhn stated in a text.) Now Millstone Weber is committed to continuing it after I-270 North is completed.

The company’s support has extended to everything from driver’s training and finding housing for “home-challenged” participants to renting luxury motor coaches for field trips and catering lunch for Saturday classes. MW Communiversity matches participants in Project PAVE and the DBE mentoring program with services from area agencies to help them on their path.

Work of a Lifetime

For Martain, who plans to retire at year-end and is training her successor, Project PAVE is the culmination of life’s work focused on helping people find better lives.

Growing up in Port Huron, MI, Martain did not experience the overt racism that the people she serves have known. Her father was a molder in a brass factory and her mother was a homemaker who did catering and took in ironing.

After graduating high school at 16, Vivian thought graduated from a two year nursing program. But she was too young to take the RN test. She ended up working for trade associations, which is where she met her husband. Martain states that she has, “…five years of college but no degree. I have a bachelor’s degree in common sense, a master’s in experience, and a PhD in common sense.”

She next shifted to the public sector, working for the Urban League and the St. Louis Housing Authority. She worked with Terry McCormack and Richard Baron founders of McCormack Baron & Associates, who pioneered tenant-managed public housing. Martain developed a management training program for tenants and weathered a tenant rent strike.

In 2000 she began leading the Construction Prep Center program at the MET center in Wellston. The project, which came out of the 1999 protests that shut down traffic on the I-70 project provided training for unemployed Blacks, including a number who were returning from incarceration. She remembers the numbers: over 60 cohorts with close to 1,200 graduates and a 53% placement rate. Three Construction Prep Center came to Millstone Weber. Two are foremen. The third became and electrician, earned a degree, and is now in project management at MW.

But, more important to Martain than the metrics are the people. She cites the former gang member who is now a millionaire. In March, when Richie Boyd Jr. a young man who was just beginning his career as a laborer, died in a widely publicized hit-and-run accident near SLU, she reached out to his father, who was one of her Construction Prep grads.

In the midst of his grief, Vivian Martain recalled,  Richard Boyd Sr. told her how proud he had been that his son was joining him in the construction trades.