“I really grew up in this industry,” Danica Bilicich-Mason, Assoc. DBIA, said.
Walking down the streets near her grandfather’s home in Watsonville, California, where Granite Construction and Graniterock are industry anchors, she’d often bump into “uncles” who came up through work studies under her grandfather and remained close friends with him.
Finding Her Place in the Industry
Despite an upbringing steeped in construction, Bilicich-Mason originally planned to chart an entirely different course, majoring in biochemistry. Thanks to an organic chemistry course, that path didn’t last, and neither did her distance from the industry she grew up around. A pivot to marketing ultimately led her right back to the AEC industry, where she now works as the Principal of Red Team Go, supporting clients across transportation, aviation and water and wastewater. There, she focuses on proposals, marketing and DBE and Inclusion Management. On any given day, that can mean moving between complex infrastructure proposals and hands-on work with small and diverse businesses and prime contractors. Bilicich-Mason’s career was recently recognized by Influential Women as a leading marketing and strategy expert in the AEC industry.
Although she didn’t set out to build a career in construction, Bilicich-Mason found her place in the industry after all.
“The thought of living indoors full-time, sitting behind a desk just didn’t really do it for me,” she said. “[The AEC industry] was a good mix for me, melding both worlds, going to work in this industry but getting to use my degree the way that made sense for me.”
Associate DBIA Certification in a Marketing Role
Bilicich-Mason is also a DBIA member and holds an Associate Design-Build Professional® Certification. While DBIA certification is often associated with technical and project delivery roles, her deep design-build experience made her a strong fit for the credential.
During her first job in marketing at an engineering firm, she was immediately assigned to design-build projects. The team had her in the room for every task force meeting, making her an embedded part of the team and ensuring her knowledge informed how success was defined. Bilicich-Mason felt lucky to be in a company where even the proposal group was co-located with the contractor, and this level of collaboration across the team sparked a love for design-build projects. To her, it felt like a “right place, right time” situation.
Even before earning her Associate DBIA®, she helped multiple companies enter the collaborative delivery space. The credential later reinforced her experience, increasing trust in her ability to support teams new to collaborative delivery. She has also seen more Owners request at least one team member with DBIA certification, leading several clients to list her resume in proposals to demonstrate design-build experience.
DBIA’s certification is designed to recognize real-world design-build experience, including when it’s gained through non-traditional roles.
“Eligibility for the DBIA certification does require documented design-build experience, meaning candidates must be actively working in the design-build industry to qualify,” said Nour Hennidi, Director of Certification for DBIA. “That said, a DBIA® or Associate DBIA® can still be highly valuable for professionals in less traditional AEC roles, as it builds fluency in the design-build process and strengthens collaboration and project management skills.”
How AEC Marketing is Unique
That combination of experience and credibility shapes how Bilicich-Mason approaches her day-to-day work, a key part of which is translating proposals to be more digestible for project stakeholders who are evaluating proposals outside their own areas of expertise.
Bilicich-Mason said the kind of marketing she does often doesn’t match common expectations of the field. “When people think about marketing, they picture big agencies and flashy campaigns,” she said. “That’s not what we do. We don’t do sexy marketing. We do business-to-government marketing.”
Much of that work involves taking highly technical material –– the kind contractors and engineers work with every day –– and translating it into proposals that are clear, readable and compelling for Owners and other stakeholders.
“We do turn out great documents, and they’re pretty,” Bilicich-Mason said, but they are also synthesizing complex concepts into layman’s terms so anyone can open the document and understand the proposal. Part of that work is creating graphics and diagrams to help convey project concepts, making it easier for readers to understand.
“We want to show that ‘hey, we’re really technical and we’re really good at what we do, but we also want you to see it and understand it,’” Bilicich-Mason said.
How that information is presented can shape how a proposal is received. “You can open up proposals and look at them, and you can tell the ones that are done in Microsoft Word versus InDesign, and you can tell who is living in the 90s versus who is current,” Bilicich-Mason said.
Subtle differences in the quality of a proposal go beyond making a good impression; visuals can also make complex concepts more accessible, particularly on projects that might otherwise feel abstract or technical.
Bilicich-Mason said it is not always easy to get people interested in less exciting projects, but presenting a proposal with graphics and creative design can do much of the legwork to get people on board.
“Seeing something written on a plan sheet is different from seeing something that has cartoon cars on it and little cone barriers,” Bilicich-Mason said. “Those visuals make it easier to understand and easier to care about.”
Roles like Bilicich-Mason’s create clearer proposals that support better Owner understanding, reduce risk, improve alignment and decision-making, and help teams demonstrate collaboration in practice, all important elements of Design-Build Done Right®.
