Dawn Lowers-Davis' parents started Lowers Welding & Fabrication, Inc. in 1973. That was also the year Dawn was born, so you could say she has grown up with her family's Los Angeles City certified structural steel fabrication and machine shop. Starting when Dawn was only in middle school, her father began to teach her about the fabrication industry.
"He would let me drill, punch, drive the forklifts and taught me to weld before I was 15," Dawn recalls. She had the chance to visit job sites, meet key people in the heavy civil construction field and work side-by-side with her sisters to learn about the family business.
But in 2010, Dawn's father passed away from cancer.
The family's sudden, tremendous loss was also felt by their company, which was struggling to find work at the time. "I didn’t know how we were going to make it," Dawn says. Fortunately, their decades of experience and sterling reputation soon connected them to Metro's Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project and eventually to the Purple Line Extension.
Dawn is now the President of this 100% woman-owned DBE firm. Lowers Welding has a long history of tunneling projects and has worked on all three sections of the subway extension, beginning in 2014. The company has also worked with Frontier-Kemper since the early 1990s and Dawn is grateful for the opportunity to continue the relationship now working for FKTP JV. "Their trust and respect for our company," Dawn says, "makes exceeding their goals all worth it. Seeing our product in the ground, doing what it is supposed to be doing, makes us feel so proud."
On the Project, Lowers Welding recently built the secant piles and ring beams to support the TTES. While this year has produced plenty of challenges, Dawn always looks forward to solving problems. "Design-build projects give us a chance to shine and show people we can think outside the box."
Dawn and her sisters, Nora and Sheri, have been able to grow the family business precisely because of that creativity and determination—qualities a father would be proud to pass down to his daughters.
