Syndi Schreiner is preparing for a career in pre-construction, building her skills through hands-on internship experience at KBS Constructors. A senior at Kansas State University’s Construction Science and Management program, Syndi has grown from fieldwork into estimating and pricing responsibilities over three summers. Passionate about teamwork and community, Syndi encourages others, especially young women, to give construction a try.
Syndi Schreiner is entering her senior year at Kansas State University in the Construction Science and Management program, and this summer marks her third summer interning at KBS Constructors. Her internship experience has spanned multiple areas of the field: her first summer was spent mostly in the field, working on a city hall remodel and gaining hands-on exposure to demolition and general construction work. By her second summer, she had shifted primarily into pre-construction, working on estimating and takeoff for various projects, including one she continued supporting remotely throughout the school year before returning to watch it go out to bid.
This summer, Syndi has taken on more responsibility in pre-construction, including handling pricing for smaller jobs independently. She credits her internship experience with deepening her understanding of coursework back at school, noting that she hadn’t even taken an estimating class before gaining hands-on estimating experience through her internship.
Syndi decided to pursue construction around her junior year of high school, after a conversation with her father about wanting a career that wouldn’t involve doing the same thing every day. Though she never took formal construction classes in high school, she grew up helping her father with hands-on projects on evenings and weekends, which gave her early exposure to the field before she ever considered it as a career.
Syndi finds pre-construction especially rewarding because it allows her to be involved from the very beginning of a project, understanding what an owner wants and working through design and pricing stages with architects and subcontractors. Her advice to young women and anyone intimidated by the industry is simple: just try it, since the people in construction genuinely want to help others succeed.
