Recognized as a dynamic and enterprising professional with extraordinary leadership and service, chief estimator for the West region Michelle Rabinovich was named an ENR California Top Young Professional. Read more about Michelle below and in her ENR California award feature here.

Michelle’s first experience with construction was when she was five years old, helping her dad color I-beams on a set of drawings. Fascinated by his job, Michelle began to pursue a career in construction, challenged and inspired by getting to work on new projects every day.

A skilled leader in both estimating and preconstruction on projects with substantial scope and complexity, Michelle leads the team of estimators to provide clients with the most complete picture of the resources required to execute a construction effort as smoothly and efficiently as possible. She draws on her preconstruction acumen and the expert resources within Shawmut to provide solutions and safeguards against market volatility to provide clients as much predictability of outcome as possible.

While Michelle has worked on thousands of technically complex and challenging builds throughout her career, she’s most proud of the beautiful spaces that enhance the community, including UCLA Nimoy Theater. The first education project for the West region, the renovation of the historic Crest Theatre is transforming the iconic space into The Nimoy—restoring the theater to its original role as a venue for live performance and cinematic arts. A recent major accomplishment, Michelle led the preconstruction effort on the largest project in Shawmut’s history—a ground-up, multi-building endeavor featuring sustainable materials.

Leading with a focus on people, Michelle understands that everyone can learn from each other. She will proactively ask for her team members to train her on areas where they are skilled or passionate so she can see their perspective and understand the tools they find important. This gives her team members agency and confidence to continue to grow and learn.

Michelle met with an LGBTQIA STEM student group at Cal Poly Pomona, talking about her profession and sharing how to carve out a career in the construction industry. She also discussed the need of diversity in the industry and shared her experience as a queer woman, providing her perspective to the students on how to navigate challenges.

Michelle is a supporter of the Chabad Jewish Center in Newport Beach, including its Friendship Circle, which brings friendship and inclusion to children and young adults with special needs through a variety of social, recreational, and educational programs and offers support and respite to their families.