Breaking Ground
Sevgi Gul Gode’s path into construction began with mining engineering. During underground mining training, she saw how demanding yet technically rewarding the field could be. Her graduation focus on natural stone proved decisive, shifting her interest from underground work to quarried materials used in construction. From that point, her career moved towards natural stone consultancy. Technical curiosity, strong timing, and growing management opportunities helped shape that direction, while Versatile International gave her the platform to turn that specialism into a career.
Leadership on Site
Working across complex projects with varied stakeholders, suppliers, and teams has shaped Sevgi’s leadership. Her style is analytical, measured, and highly responsive. She brings in field expertise early, supervising first and anticipating challenges before they arise.
Her approach is both pragmatic and technical. For construction phases such as design coordination, she’s deeply hands-on, integrating site observations, shop drawing insights, and material controls, applying geological heritage to project oversight. All that has required precision, attention to detail, strong vision, durability, and supplier-driven quality achievement. Stone control is defined by precision, collaboration, and strong personal responsibility.
Investigative Approach in Practice
As a Stone Project Management Consultant and Quarry Manager, Sevgi oversees sourcing to ensure materials meet client specifications. On a recent Diriyah project, she identified subtle colour variations between stone blocks that would have disrupted the final elevation. Instead of approving all material, she segregated batches by hand range at the quarry, adjusted cutting sequences, and specified layering mock-ups for the contractors. Her decision reduced rework and preserved the design intent, demonstrating how geological understanding and construction judgment can directly affect quality, schedule, and cost.
Raising the Bar
Sevgi believes women need both practical support and structural backup to thrive in construction. Family-friendly policies, leadership support, and real access to opportunity all matter. She also believes the industry should better advertise the value women bring, particularly in attention to detail, systems thinking and reading complex stakeholder dynamics.
For her, progress depends on having more women at every stage of the process, from quarries and sites to procurement and design decision-making. She sees leadership support as crucial in turning potential into real expertise, especially on technically demanding and high-profile work.
Passing on Knowledge
Sevgi is actively involved in on-site training, knowledge-transfer sessions, and multilingual briefings. She works with contractors and junior staff on reading block variability, anticipating weathering, specifying anchors and finishes, and managing procurement to design intent versus the supply chain. Her training is practical and site-led, focused on reducing mistakes before they happen and improving installation quality, long-term performance, and client confidence.
Advice to Other Women
Her advice to women considering this path is to build strong technical foundations and combine discipline with curiosity. She says field clarity is essential, particularly on-site, where conditions shift quickly and informed decisions must often be made under pressure.
For Sevgi, the work is not glamorous, but it is deeply rewarding. Much of it happens in quarries and on active sites, through inspections, logistics, and close coordination with teams on the ground. Yet that is precisely what drives her. She believes natural stone consultancy offers women a space to lead, teach, and influence how projects are delivered.
CAREER HIGHLIGHT MAP
Five key moments that have defined her journey
- Studying mining engineering and building a strong technical base.
- Specialising in natural stone through her graduation project.
- Bridging geology and construction in early technical roles.
- Moving into management across supply chains, quality, and specification.
- Leading on-site stone work for major programmes such as Diriyah.
