Colette DiLauro, 33

What are you doing for July 4th weekend?

That was the question Colette DiLauro’s London-based supervisor asked her a few years ago. It was June, and she didn’t have anything special in mind.

I don’t know, she answered.

Do you want to go to Greece? her supervisor asked.

Yeah, she answered. I have no other plans.

Of course, her boss wasn’t inviting her to a really, really inconvenient Fourth of July barbecue. Rather, DiLauro was gearing up to take on the development of a 300-acre park that needed stormwater systems and green infrastructure.

“My view was: take this challenge head on,” DiLauro said. “I’ll take anything head on. The bigger the challenge, the more rewarding when you get through the project.”

The challenges were definitely there. “In Greece, all their infrastructure was 500 years old. They had no infrastructure for stormwater. They were very skeptical. I had to make them comfortable with it.”

Naturally, a Greek engineering job is an exotic assignment for a Westchester County native who now lives in New York City with her husband (who’s also an engineer, and whom she met by the watercooler on her first day at Langan), but DiLauro might have a better one: She’s currently waking up at 6 a.m. for meetings on a soccer stadium in Saudi Arabia, where she is the project lead on a 10-person team.

“Civil engineering is consistent throughout the world,” DiLauro said, “but the way people communicate is different. You have to be persistent in getting answers. Maybe people don’t want to feel so pushy — but … it helps out not just our teams but the project as a whole.”

One shouldn’t think that the Lehigh graduate is only about international jet-setting. She has done projects closer to home, too, like the Resorts World casino in Jamaica, Queens. “I feel comfortable in New York. I know what to expect.”