If you know me at all, you know that “call a spade a spade” is one of my favorite idioms. I like it because it gets right to the point of calling something out that can be a difficult pill to swallow (double idioms, see what I did there). After talking with Jessica Bukovac in our Ashburn, Virginia office, it’s honestly the first phrase that came to mind because she returned to her career in civil engineering after a seven-year period as a stay-at-home military mom. Call a spade a spade, that seems like a very difficult thing to do.
I think most people probably can’t fathom what it’s like to reenter your career field after seven years. Not only did Jessica do it — she’s excelling in every facet.
Jessica is a PE III in our transportation design group. Among other functions of her role, she is largely responsible for roadway design in public works projects including roundabout features and shared use paths. She works with project managers to create a set of concept designs, plans, and cost estimates that ultimately lead to a singular design plan for a project. Jessica will work from start to finish on a project to ensure that transportation assets are functional for new and existing roadway users and beneficial for the client’s vision, a process she often oversees throughout the lifetime of a project.
Jessica’s role primarily falls in line with large scale developments, including The Lake in Chesterfield. The new 13-acre development is currently under construction and will feature residential units, mixed-use and commercial buildings, and sports venues, including a man-made lake. The adjacent infrastructure is connected with a roundabout, that Jessica’s team is designing. “It’s really a full range,” Jessica said about her work. “It’s such an interesting and rewarding career, and the projects I have right now are all in different stages of development, so it’s fascinating to see them all come together.”
Before she reentered the civil engineering career field as a full-time engineer at Timmons Group, Jessica was a stay-at-home mom to her two children. She grew up in California and attended San Jose State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. She worked at a local firm for several years and completed many projects on the West Coast before she and her husband took several years to travel as a military family. Their journeys took them to North Carolina, Japan, and Northern Virginia, where they settled.
Jessica says her children are a staple of her life. She and her husband have an eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son. “I’ll be in tears when he goes to kindergarten, but it’s a really fun time.”
While full-time motherhood provided life changing and fulfilling opportunities for Jessica, she says she always knew she wanted to get back into the swing of a technical career in engineering. “I was not planning on staying at home permanently. I wanted to come back to my career,” Jessica said. “I loved being home with my kids all the time, but there was a part of my brain that hadn’t been used in so long, and I was itching to get back to it.”
When Jessica joined the firm about a year ago, she had been a stay-at-home mom for quite a while. “I was able to find Timmons and as I was reading about the company work life balance and culture, it just clicked. This would be perfect for me. And now I’m able to have a flexible schedule and healthy balance.”
“Seven years is a long time to be out of the workforce,” Jessica said. “I was worried to jump back into things — I was worried that my skills wouldn’t hold up with newer technologies and changes in the industry. But I was happily surprised to learn that once I started working again the muscle memory was there, and I’ve been taking on bigger and bigger projects, which is a great opportunity.”
Her team is spread out across several offices, including our Richmond headquarters, Staunton, Raleigh, and Ashburn, where Jessica sits. Like many of our cross-pollinated teams, Jessica works regularly with folks in a remote way, and she says she still feels like a great asset to the team even though she doesn’t see her coworkers in person every day. “We’re so integrated in what we do, and we collaborate a lot, and the team structure and the projects we work on are great for that.”
Jessica elaborated and says that she’s grateful for her experience at Timmons Group because her teams are understanding and supportive of her family life. “My schedule fluctuates! Depending on what’s going on, between work and the kids, it’s nice knowing I have a supportive team,” she said. “I don’t miss the important things, and a lot of our team members have families, so we all work together to support each other.”
Jessica’s ever evolving role as a mom equipped her well for a transition back into her career as a civil engineer. Getting back into the swing of things is a challenge, but it’s safe to say that Jessica’s drive to excel in both motherhood and her career is an inspiring trait of her character.
Jessica’s work experiences are robust, and she is also currently designing a slew of other impressive transportation projects, including the Bailey Bridge Connector and Upper Magnolia Green, both in Chesterfield, Virginia, and the Harmony Middle School Shared Use Path project in Purcellville, Virginia
Interested in working with Jessica and our transportation design team? Check out our current openings here.
