How Women Are Shaping the
Future of Construction

Rianna Gates:

Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar, How Women are Shaping the Future of Construction. So my name is Rianna Gates. I’m a solution engineer with InEight, focusing on document control and information management. And firstly, Happy International Women’s Day and Happy Women in Construction Week. If anyone else is like me, I’m sure that then it’s not a coincidence that they come in on the same time. So firstly, I’d like to acknowledge that there’s probably many webinars or similar events happening today around something very similar. So I really appreciate you coming to InEight’s webinar today. It’s really great to have you all here and to see our great panelists talk about their experiences and share their insights about having women in the construction industry to other people in the sector.

So a couple of sort of housekeeping items you’ll see up on the screen. We’ve got a couple of features on today’s platform. So firstly, everyone will be muted. So apart from our panelists and myself, and I’m sure that you’ll get sick of my voice eventually. But a couple of extra features. We’ve got a chat feature in here. So we really encourage participation today. The chat feature will allow you to interact with each other as audience members or to create any sort of commentary around the discussion that’s happening today. And we also have a Q&A box. So if you have any burning questions for our panelists today, specific panelists, or any of them at all, please, by all means, ask a question. If I can, I will bring them up throughout the session, otherwise, they may be left until the end, time permitting, but I’m sure that we will have time to go through the questions.

So before I get started and before we get into some introductions, I’ve just got a couple of statistics to go through, which is sort of going to kick today’s webinar off. So McKinsey & Company have repeatedly reported that most gender diverse companies are 25% more likely to achieve above average profitability than their less diverse competitors. In Australia, women still make up only 12% of the construction workforce. In the US, female representation in construction hovers around the 10% mark, however, out on the actual job sites, that number plummets to 1%. So some pretty significant statistics there on the lower end. But to welcome today’s panel members, I just want to start off with an apology from Taiana, who’s the contracts manager from FILTEC who was planning to join us today. However, she has had an emergency at home, and we support her in putting all of her energy into that. However, we still have two amazing panelists with us today. We’ve got Sarah from Abergeldie and Brendan from Laing O’Rourke and I’ll let them introduce themselves in that order. So over to you, Sarah.

 

Sarah Roach:

Hi, thanks very much, Ri. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. First off, you’ll appreciate my slightly croaky voice but we’ll persevere on. So I’m Sarah Roach, I’m the general manager commercial at Abergeldie Complex Infrastructure. We are a civil utilities company. I started my career in professional services as a construction lawyer and as an accountant and then made my way into an in-house role at an energy company. I then started a construction law firm before moving into kind of more commercial roles as chief operating officer for a property development and scaffolding company and then started as a commercial manager in civil construction. And then I’ve made my way here. So that’s a snapshot of my journey and professional career to date. Brendan.

 

Brendan Morton:

Thanks, Sarah and Ri. And yeah, Happy International Women’s Day to everyone on the webinar. And I think also just thanks to InEight for hosting this webinar and it’s obviously very important topic for our industry and also, personally for myself, to be the opportunity to participate in the panel as well. So Brendan Morton is my name. I’m a project technical leader from Laing O’Rourke. My background is probably not quite as diverse as Sarah’s in terms of experience. I’ve been pretty blinkered on in the engineering space but have worked across government consulting and contracting about the last six years or so. I’ve been working with Laing O’Rourke and through thinking about this webinar coming up, it’s interesting when you move from consulting across to contracting is that they throw away lines in the discussion or you’re going to the dark side. So there is that perception around our industry that is out there. That is certainly, I think, a good discussion and topic for today as to how we change that and its relevance to this very topic that we’re talking about. So thank you, Ri.

 

Rianna Gates:

Awesome. We will get to that dark side situation very soon. I think we should just to start, we’ll focus on our diversity of professional experience. So Sarah, coming back to you, because your experience has really spanned many industries, really, and you’ve got a lot of experience back there, but what inspired you to get into construction, especially after all the other industries that you’ve been a part of, and how do you feel that your diverse experience is contributing to your current role in construction?

 

Sarah Roach:

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ri. So look, I guess a bit of an interesting journey, for sure. I think I’ve always been interested in understanding how things work and to the extent construction is building things. In order to do that, you need to understand how it all comes together and how it’s constructed. And I still recall the conversation that I had when I was finished year 12 and it was time to put in my uni preferences. I went to my father and said, “Oh, look, I’ve got to put in my uni preferences. I think I want to preference engineering.” And he said to me, “Oh, look, that’s lovely, sweetheart, but women aren’t engineers. So you’ll do law and commerce.” And so I did. I did law and commerce, majoring in accounting, but I very quickly moved myself back into construction. So only a couple of years after graduation, moved into construction law and then really progressed into more developed construction roles from that point onwards.

So I get to spend most of my day with engineers and pester them with questions about how things work and how things are done and why is it done this way and what about this. So look, I’ve managed to find my way back, spending time with engineers. Look, as to, I guess, my experience and how I think that’s contributing to my role, look, I think fundamentally, I guess I’m a curious person. I like to understand why things are the way they are, why they’re done the way they are, with a view of looking always at how things can be done better. That’s just something that I find personally really interesting and rewarding. And so having a bunch of different types of experience or experience in different roles I think allows me to bring different insights or questions.

I haven’t had to spend my whole career in the same role to have all of that background of knowing that’s exactly why things are done that way. And so it allows me the opportunity to ask what might be those more curious or probing questions, with a view of identifying if we can optimize or make improvements in how we’re doing things. So construction, as an industry and in the work we do, is fundamentally solving a bunch of complex problems continually. And so I think it’s that ability to think outside the box, to have different experience to draw on in tackling those challenging issues and finding different solutions.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, awesome. The curiosity thing is such a significant part of coming into construction. And without Taiana to give her very diverse background experience as well, I’ll share a little bit of mine because I do think that the diversity of experience actually creates curiosity as well. And bringing that into construction, which is where it’s needed, is really key. I mean, my background has gone from… I started in television production, then I went into travel agency, then I went into advertising, then I went into wellness, and then I went into recruitment, and then I fell into document control in oil and gas. And if it wasn’t for somebody in that recruitment phase actually saying, “Oh, this might be a good thing for you.” But at the start, it was actually coupled with the reception job as well.

And I know, Sarah, we’ve had a discussion in the past that women are often placed into admin roles in their very early careers. And even my dad had always said to me, “Just go and get a stable office job.” Because that was, to him, that was important. And years and years ago, women, when they graduated or they were going into their career phases, they were really only going into secretarial work or librarian work. And it’s amazing that all of that admin type of experience can create so much curiosity about other jobs and what other people are doing because it’s so central and communicative to everybody else around you. So yeah, I think they sort of feed each other that diversity and curiosity piece.

 

Sarah Roach:

They do. And I won’t spend too long on my high horse here, but I think that there is so much of construction projects that is administration like all business, and I think quite often, the value of administration being performed by people that know how to do it are actually dot controllers is often underplayed within our industry. So anyway, I won’t [inaudible 00:11:58] about that.

 

Rianna Gates:

[inaudible 00:11:58]. Absolutely agree. So Brendan, over to you. So you’ve self-professed to say that you’ve been in the industry for quite some time, so tell us about your experience working with women and the advantages of having them around and what you’ve experienced in that sense, but also have you noticed a shift over the years of the perception of having women in construction teams?

 

Brendan Morton:

I think maybe to start, I mean, as you introduced, Ri, there’s research out there that says the outcomes and business performance is better through that greater gender diversity. So the facts are out there for us through the research, but as an industry, we’re only tapping over 12% of our workforce is female. So the question comes immediately, oh, gosh, what are we missing out on as an industry here? And we’re tapping into such a small cohort of talent that could be coming across. And equally then, you add that to the current shortages we have across skill sets in our industry at the moment. And that real lack of diversity is such a constraint to us being able to grow and diversify through the industry. So Sarah’s story, I’m sure there’s more like that where someone said, “Yeah, I want to go that way.” And someone said, “No, I think you’re better to go this way.”

And all those people that we’ve missed out, you’re saying, Marie, you’ve come in a bit later into the industry and that’s great to finally come across, but how many are we missing out on at that age? And I certainly know from my experience, probably, I did year 10 work experience in an engineering consulting firm. Did I get questioned or challenged around my choice of career? No. That was fully supported and I went about it. So absolutely, issues we’ve got to tackle down at that level. And I think then going back to my experience and beyond the business performance side of things and what the research is telling us, it’s I see better outcomes achieved through having that more diverse environment. And that’s creating workplaces that are suitable for women to come into. So that diverse environment then translates into something which is much better for the whole of everyone working.

And that’s what I see through my experiences, seeing many, many conversations and outcomes shift with females in the room. Sarah, sort of the curiosity thing, why are you doing that? Now, you’ve got a very non-diverse group in a room. You don’t have those sort of conversations because you’re all thinking the same, more or less. So just that little switch, just one female come in, changes that dynamic, brings a diversity of thought. That contribution sort of fundamentally changes in the conversation and the outcome you ultimately achieve, it is better.

So that said, I’m talking, yes, I’ve been around a little while now and what have I seen shift or change over the course of time? I’d probably really just say I think there’s been some good things happening, but I still believe we have a long way to go on this space and the numbers speak for themselves and the conversation we’re having today reflects that as well. So I don’t think we can yet claim to have really shifted perceptions significantly, and there’s still a lot more work to be done, but that’s going to need the industry to start to invest in changing these perceptions. We need to rebrand the industry to attract more females and probably put simply at this point in time, we’re not really considered an industry of choice yet, but we need to do a lot of work to get there to really have a different outcome.

 

Rianna Gates:

Mm-hmm. Such great insight, Brendan. Thank you. And I’ve got another question for you, but before I ask it, I’ve got a poll for the audience that’s going to come up for you in just a few moments. And the question for the poll is, what percentage of the women in your industry are in leadership roles such as managers, supervisors, executives, et cetera? So there’s a couple of options there for you to choose from and if you feel inclined, please answer that poll and we’ll have a look at the answers in just a few moments. But just coming back to you, Brendan, when we talk about rebranding the industry to make it more sort of female friendly, I guess, you are working with Laing O’Rourke, who have some really great things happening around gender diversity, but can you give us an example of how women are rising into leadership roles specifically at Laing O’Rourke or elsewhere and why do you think that is?

 

Brendan Morton:

I can maybe start with the why part of that. No, I think it comes back to a deliberate intent to change the perceptions about our industry. So we need females of all ages not to rule out construction as an industry of choice for them. So extending on that conversation we had earlier, so particularly young females when deciding what careers they want to pursue, but absolutely people that might be looking for a changing career as well, is construction the right fit for them? So at Laing O’Rourke, we have 45% positions on our Australian executive committee filled by women and our managing director is female and that’s Rebecca Hanley.

So what we’ve experienced at Laing O’Rourke since Rebecca stepped into the managing director role is there’s an increased interest from senior women in actually joining our business. So again, that dynamic or that shift has happened. So then we extend that further into the business and we have some exceptional women leading the delivery of our projects that we then see translates into greater gender diversity through the whole team. And I can cite some stats from one of our Melbourne based project teams where we’re sitting at 37% female senior leadership on that project, which then leads to about 53% overall female position participation in that team.

So when you compare that back to the stats that we talked about to start with, there’s a real step change there, but it’s supported by real deliberate intent to get a different outcome. So then expanding what are we actually doing across Laing O’Rourke that is contributing to these sorts of outcomes. We do have targets around gender participation to motivate change and we’re quite clear about that. We have programs to attract and retain gender diverse talent into the business. We have policies that action equality and we also have programs such as inspiring stem school program targeting the next generation. So it’s not one thing or the other. It’s investment in a lot of areas to try and shift the dial, if you like, with what’s happening today, but also what’s going to happen tomorrow and further into the future.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, it’s incredible stuff what they’re doing and I really hope it starts to catch on around the rest of the industry. And I’m going to ask Sarah something before I show the poll results, but obviously, Sarah, you are an incredible leadership role in the construction industry, but have you seen other women around you either in Abergeldie or elsewhere that are steering the industry in that way? And what are they bringing to the table?

 

Sarah Roach:

Yeah, look, a bunch of people. So equally, there are a number of women within the senior leadership team at Abergeldie. There’s a number of other general managers that we have in the business that are women. And again, I think to Brendan’s point, the more that we see women in leadership roles and even more so in executive roles in businesses, that becomes attractive to other women. They see that they can also be successful in that business because every business has an incredibly different culture. Incredibly different, and so I think demonstrating a culture that shows women in those roles in business and in industry is a real driving force to inspire other women to put their hand up for those roles. And it might encourage hiring managers to look at more diverse skillsets or experience in filling roles.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Sarah. I think we’ll bring up the answers now to the poll and you’ll see when this comes up for you in just a few moments that we have… We’ve got 23.5% of the audience saying that 2% of women are in leadership roles in their organization. 11.8% of the audience say that 5% of their organization are women in leadership roles. 11.8% say 10% in women in leadership, 35.3% say 20%. That’s not bad. 5.9% say 50% and then 11.8 say they do not know. So that’s actually not a bad statistic. I know that there’s only… I’m not quite sure how many people are on here, actually, maybe about 30 or 40 people, but thinking that 20%, nearly sort of a third of you say 20% of women are in leadership roles, which is a great thing to hear. So maybe things are shifting without it being too visible. Who knows?

So we’ve just really spoken about women going into leadership roles, but if we think about young women coming into the industry and alternatively, how do we attract women in the industry. So Sarah, maybe I’ll come back to you for a minute, but what advice would you give to young women coming into the industry and alternatively, how do we retain them? What would you say to them to keep them around?

 

Sarah Roach:

Yeah, sure. Look, I think the first thing I’d say is that I’ve personally found construction to be an incredibly rewarding and fun industry. I really enjoy it. That’s why I’ve spent most of my career here and don’t see that changing. In terms of, I guess, practical advice around retention and development, I think that my key suggestion is to build a network, to build a network internally within your business or within your university if you’re still there, and then to build a network externally. So I think that at a certain point, the majority of opportunities I’ve certainly found have been available to me based on my network. So if there are additional opportunities going in the business to be involved in a different project or a different part of a project, those kind of things are usually identified and provided based on knowing someone, your network within the business and the same with building a network externally. So I think that’d be my key piece of advice.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah. Awesome. I’m going to put up another poll now before I ask you the same thing, Brendan. So the poll that’s going to come up is what ways can we encourage more women into the construction industry or other male dominated industries? So that will come up in a second. And I know that, Brendan, you mentioned the STEM program before, and to be honest, I wish I knew that that was around when I was coming out of school or in school because I didn’t know that document control even existed as a job and I love it now and it took me until I was 30 to find it. So Brendan, what other pieces of advice would you have to young women coming into the industry?

 

Brendan Morton:

Probably in a similar theme to Sarah, but around the mentorship, which I think is one of the items there on the poll, but probably the advice around mentors-mentee relationships is it would be to find both men and women as mentors to provide you that support and sponsorship through your career. So I think what that offers is it gives both mentor and mentee that opportunity to look for those differences, to challenge our own perspectives and to share those different views through our various lived experiences. And ultimately, it feeds the diversity conversation and open our minds up. So again, sort of reflecting on some of this stuff, the saying is always, “Great minds think alike.” But perhaps we should be saying great minds think differently because if we want to change stuff, we’ve got to think differently. We’ve got to be open to different views and opinions to get the best outcome.

I think also, there’s always the element of unconscious bias. So we might think we’re doing the right thing, we understand, but those unconscious bias can creep in. So again, that mentor-mentee relationship with different genders can really help facilitate that across both genders and provide a better outcome. So I think where this starts to lead into is that importance. And I think Sarah touched on it as well, that importance of retention. So attracting is one thing, but then there’s a bit around the retention and it’s for women of all ages as well. It’s not just people coming out of studies or entering the industry. It’s people that might be entering it at a much later point in their career. So priorities change, careers change over the course of the journey. So how do we, through that mentorship support and sponsor someone through that to make sure that the construction industry remains something they want to be in and it suits their life as it evolves along with their career over that journey?

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, absolutely. So some answers on the poll, I’ll get them up in just a moment for you. And when they appear, you’ll see that 7.1% of the audience agree that creating awareness of the value women bring, 28.6 agree with STEM education for girls in high school, 35.7% agree with mentorships and role models, 28.6% more role models and women in senior leadership roles, 0% around technology to attract and retain women.

It’s a shame coming from a technology company, but we can touch on that a little bit later. But if we go into this mentoring subject now, because Brendan, we worked together for many years, and you had no idea that you were an informal mentor to me. I looked up to you and it was really around how you enabled me to take risks and to own, have responsibility that I could fail in and I could try again and you supported me the whole way. And that was obviously an informal way of mentoring. Do you have any other experiences about how you’ve been a part of a mentoring program or other informal mentoring that you’ve seen? And maybe how they can be improved upon to attract more women?

 

Brendan Morton:

I think there’s lots of… I think businesses are generally pretty good around the formal side of mentoring and I think there’s lots of other programs as well which start to bring in mentoring opportunities across industry partners, if you like. So NAWIC, for example, has a program like that. [inaudible 00:29:04]. I think that the informal piece and certainly through my own career with mentoring, it evolves across the course of the journey in it. I certainly haven’t had a mentor from start of career through end. I’ve certainly got contacts and networks that I can reach out to over that career. But I find within certain periods, if you like, over my career, it’s about, well, where does the mentoring, the relationship in formal sense sort of sit? Who are those people you go to for a conversation, get some advice and help support you in where you want to go?

So within my own team and working with Laing O’Rourke, it’s probably that there’s the, I suppose the performance side of people management and team management, but it’s trying to, I suppose, feed into that, the informal part of it as well that maybe becomes a bit more of a mentor type relationship and also certainly being open to engage in those conversations with people that maybe don’t sit in your direct line of reporting as well, which again comes back to well, there’s the diverse part of a conversation coming in to help both mentor and mentee grow in that role.

So I think probably my reflection on it on the mentor topic is that there’s always… Most organizations have a structured program and equally, there’s industry-wide things to support that, but it sort of comes back to that informal bit and maybe linking back into some of Sarah’s comments around networks as well and building those networks and who are those people that you don’t have a formal relationship with but you’ve built a network with them. And you may not really know it, but there’s an informal sort of mentoring relationship building in the background there as well. So that’s probably my experience. It’s probably I’ve drawn a lot more on the informal side throughout my career. I think I try to maybe lend that a bit to what people I work with as well, and I see real benefits coming from both. But yeah, matching up the formal with the informal sort of gives, I think, the biggest bang for buck, so to speak.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, I agree. And I know that from my experience, the informal mentorship across discipline has been key for me to feel like I could have much more of an influence on certain processes and things that happen in the industry. Sometimes I’ve found that the formal mentoring, especially the industry mentoring, it’s around probably more people that have an engineering background, and I feel maybe it’s just my perspective, but if I’ve wanted to be a part of that industry mentoring, I’ve really had to prove myself because I’m not an engineer or so forth. But over to you, Sarah, what’s… What’s your experience of either being a mentor or a mentee either prior to construction or in the construction industry where you are now?

 

Sarah Roach:

Yeah, sure. Look, I’ve had kind of a lot of experience, particularly being a mentor. So again, as Brendan mentioned through NAWIC, they’ve got formal programs and then also, most organizations do at this point. I think I share your experience in terms of heavily predominated by engineering. And so again, to the extent that that’s helpful, it is obviously helpful in a large extent. And I also… I guess I share Brendan’s thoughts that I’ve probably experienced more informal mentoring to have been more valuable largely in my case. Brendan did also mention when he spoke about sponsorship. So I think there’s obviously wide mentorship programs, but I think what is particularly helpful is sponsorship of people. So what I mean by that is a mentor-mentee relationship tends to be more kind of an informal or an informal check-in with kind of touchpoints and support and guidance along the way.

The sponsorship, what I’m talking about there is more someone that actively looks for opportunities that they think might benefit you and puts you forward for those opportunities when they arise. Or someone that is more senior than you and is looking for really opportunities that might give you kind of a leg up or a pull up or horizontally, if it’s a breadth of experience that someone’s looking for. So I think if there’s something that businesses or individuals could look at doing more, it’s in, I think, maybe developing some of those sponsorship type relationships to really advance opportunities for progression and breadth of experience.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, that’s awesome. I agree. I’ve just got a bit of a sideline question around qualities of women and putting this together with the diverse background that we’re talking about, all this different experience that we need to harness to bring into the construction industry and how can we infiltrate that into making women have a place and be heard and be involved in different sort of teams. And there’s a couple of questions coming through that I’ll touch on afterwards, but Brendan, I’ll come to you first. What qualities do you think women bring, regardless of whether they’ve come from construction from the beginning of their career or if they’ve come from many different industries, what do you think that they can bring that the construction industry needs?

And for example, if I think about resilience, especially when a lot of women in their careers, in their early careers, especially for me, I’ll be doing a job and a team member leaves and then I’ve got to pick up the team member’s responsibilities, and those responsibilities might have nothing to do with my current job. So it’s that resilience and sort of adapting to different things. And I feel the construction industry as a whole requires that sort of adaptability and resilience. But what else do you think that women can bring that the construction industry needs?

 

Brendan Morton:

I think you’ve probably hit the nail right on the head, Ri, around it is that adaptability. And Sarah touched on it as well, that engineering probably is too focused on… Or construction is too focused on engineering, but the actual industry requires a very broad breadth of skills to do what we need to do. So whilst we do want to attract more females into engineering side of things and to break down the barriers to them considering it as an industry of choice that they’d be happy to enter into, I think we also need to open our eyes a little bit wider to go, “Well, what is the right background for a role? And what is suitable for a role actually mean?” Is it that you’ve got five to 10 years’ experience and a bachelor’s degree or higher in engineering? Which is probably typically where we start off with most of our role descriptions.

So that’s sort of a different topic. I think it’s still certainly in the diversity space, but we need to look at that. I think that that’s a broader topic that comes in here as well. Qualities wise, absolutely, there’s adaptability, there’s resilience. But going back to some of the earlier commentary, I couldn’t put my finger on… Well, I couldn’t claim to know why it is or how it occurs, but it really is just that different angle of looking at something, and it simply comes back again to me to having diversity in the room. And females absolutely bring that in a male dominated industry. So those breath of fresh airs or that revelation when we’re working through and it’s maybe it’s not necessarily solving a technical problem, although absolutely females contribute massively in that space. It could be just a simple thing of how we’re approaching something.

So in your area, Ri, where you worked at the doc control function when you were with us was just a simple solution to a problem that we couldn’t work out otherwise. So I think it’s just being able to really think clearly, bringing a different thought process that leads to a different outcome that makes everything better. So that’s the qualities and that’s the psyche and how we all are wired. I can’t really comment on that, but that’s the experience I’ve had. Is that the diverse change in thought, something that was maybe obvious, but it just wasn’t in the field of view of the people in the room at the time until we had that sort of different representation come in and provide the answer.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah. Thanks, Brendan. Well, you heard it here first. To make it better. That’s… Women make it better. No, I’m kidding. Sarah, what about you? What do you think about women’s qualities that they can bring into construction? Which construction needs?

 

Sarah Roach:

Look, at the risk of dodging a direct question about women on International Women’s Day at a webinar about women in construction, I don’t think it’s a gender thing in particular. I think, from my perspective, it is a diversity of skills, background, thought, and experience, I think. And I think that’s what, as an industry, we should be encouraging. Certainly, gender is one large piece of that, but I do think it’s broader and I think it’s as… I think Brendan and I are aligned, it’s a diversity piece and having those, having different people with different ideas to challenge the status quo or the way things have always been done or to just bring a different experience or thought process to a problem is incredibly valuable.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sarah. I’m going to jump in.

 

Brendan Morton:

Yeah, maybe just to expand on that. Sorry, Ri. Just quickly, is it’s about representing community as well. So what we, as an industry, represent in terms of our diversity doesn’t match up with what’s in community. And a lot of what we do is for community. So to bring community representation into what we do and what we deliver, it needs almost an equivalent representation of that diversity. So we are getting that diversity of thought in what we’re delivering and haven’t got a, as I said earlier, a blanket approach that it’s what we did last time, it’s what we do every time. This is the right answer. And sort of linking it back to that community piece.

 

Sarah Roach:

That community and representation piece is a really great point, Brendan. I’ll just… I’ve seen it. There’s a question that’s come through in the Q&A box which says, for us in our next meeting this afternoon, how many women will be in attendance? And it’s a fair question. I just had a quick look at my calendar. My next meeting, which is right after this webinar, is an external meeting with three other businesses that are in construction. There’ll be nine of us there in total. I’m the only person there from Abergeldie, but I’ll be the only woman. So there is clearly, in that forum and in that space, there will not be much community representation of thought, ideas, or diversity. So I think I liked that point, Brendan.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah. Also, very good question as well. Brendan, now, have you got access to your next meeting to see how many women are in it?

 

Sarah Roach:

Putting him on the spot.

 

Brendan Morton:

[inaudible 00:42:59].

 

Sarah Roach:

I got a chance to pre-check before I decided to comment.

 

Brendan Morton:

I was just trying to open up the invite and I’m getting the donut of discs on my computer. So hopefully [inaudible 00:43:12] the webinar for me. But it’s actually, I’ve got my alliance management team weekly meeting and that’s my next meeting after this one at 1:00. And there’s certainly three great females on that leadership group on our alliance management team. So that’s less than 50%, I don’t know the exact number, but it’s certainly more than 12. So good representation. Could it be better, more diverse? Absolutely. But that’s what I’ve got coming up after this one.

 

Sarah Roach:

That’s good. I think that’s a reasonable outcome, Brendan. I don’t want to steer us down a rabbit hole here, but we just got a really good follow up question, which is in that meeting, will I be expected to take the minutes? And this is such a great question because it is… The answer is no, I won’t be, because I have set that expectation long ago that just because I am the only woman in the room does not mean I will be taking the minutes. If it’s appropriate for me to be the person that takes the minutes, I will. But if it’s not, I will not be. And that’s another, that’s a whole nother piece we can go down, but ensuring as often the only woman in a meeting that you’re not by default expected to be doing the administration or the organization or the minute taking is a really important thing for a really important expectation, I think, for women to set in the workplace.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah. I very much agree, and actually, it’s very similar to a document controller’s perspective where document controllers are often seen as administrators even though they have a very high commercial and quality related aspect to their job, which takes a lot of concentration. So yeah, I do agree with that. I will pop into another question. So this one’s for anyone. What would you say to a woman who is worried about maintaining her sense of self and still being taken seriously by men? Does anyone have an answer to that one?

 

Sarah Roach:

Look, I can jump in. I think there’s an interesting… I guess there’s an interesting quote, and I don’t remember who said it or exactly how it goes, but it kind of… It challenges you. When you’re speaking, do you want to be heard or do you want to be understood? And I think within a workplace, we all need to potentially moderate our behavior or our reactions, every individual, because it’s fundamentally a team environment where we each need to coexist and work together and get along. So I think that within a workplace, there has to be some element of understanding who you are and who everyone else is and how to communicate and interact and work with people so that everyone gets an opportunity to shine and bring out their best and to work best most collaboratively. So I think innately, there is some element of working with others and demonstrating respect and courtesy, but I think that that just should be shown to everyone.

 

Rianna Gates:

Yeah, awesome. Brendan, do you have anything?

 

Brendan Morton:

I can probably add to that. Yeah, thinking about that, so I think when you talk to a lot of females and they are the only female in a meeting room, for example, that is dominated by males, a common story is, well, I said something and offered something to the meeting and it didn’t really get heard or understood and then someone else said the same thing a bit later and it was like it was the first time it’d been brought up. So I think that’s a real challenge. And it’s interesting, it’s rare, but I have had an experience where I’ve been the only male in a meeting room with a greater number of females. And it is… You do notice that being the dynamic, but then I go back into my shoes. And if I’m in a meeting which maybe has a single female in it and a number of males, you don’t immediately pick up on that.

So I think we’ve got to be acknowledged and be aware that that does create a different dynamic. And for someone in that environment, they’d need that support and sponsorship to be heard and understood. So it comes back to that leadership and recognizing that there’s maybe an unrepresented contingent of their community, let’s say, in the room, but it doesn’t mean what they’re offering or what they’ve got to add should be valued any less. So making sure everyone’s got that voice and that opportunity is critical in those scenarios. And if we are doing that, we’re encouraging that diversity, we’re hopefully then starting to see over time that those sorts of scenarios in meetings become less and less where we’re starting to see two, three, four more females in the room that suddenly that doesn’t really become a major issue or challenge to get over to give that quality into those forums without the concern or feeling that I’m outnumbered. I’m not sure what I’m offering here because no one’s listening to me.

 

Rianna Gates:

And I think you’ve hit it in terms of the sponsorship or the support. Often, it just takes one person to provide that and everyone else will listen. That’s what I’ve had in my experience, is just having one or another person in that meeting room who actually believes in you, whether or not you believe in yourself or you’re trying to put your voice forward. You just need that one person that provides that. And then that spreads, right? That’s the whole great thing about women rising into leadership positions. That’s where it starts from. It’s that culture that starts from the top, even though we want it from peer to peer, but that’s where people find that they follow that from.

So there’s a couple more questions in the chat. One of them is for me. It says, “Rianna. Why did you choose construction or do you feel it chose you, so to speak, because of the opportunities you saw early on?” So I’ll be honest in saying I fell into construction. I was doing document control/reception in oil and gas over in Perth and I moved over to Sydney back where my hometown was and got a job as a doc controller and a very large civil tender, which we won. I think I loved it for a few reasons and it wasn’t necessarily about opportunities I saw for myself because I didn’t really see it at that point. But what construction provided to me was this team of camaraderie and togetherness and collaboration, which some of the other industries I’ve worked for didn’t have that level of camaraderie.

And me especially, I’m a very social person and probably a lot of other women, we thrive in that team environment. We actually would love to go out for a drink with the boys on a Friday night. And I’ve always been invited to those ever since I’ve been in the construction industry. And just tying that back into that sort of sponsorship, it wasn’t until I was working with Brendan and another one of our colleagues, my manager at that point, his name is Hayden. It wasn’t until I had those two people support me and throw my name in the ring and have trust that I can go off into client meetings and have those discussions that I actually didn’t realize how much opportunity I had in the space of document control management in that role. And that’s really my confidence and my school level has really just grown from there just because of a couple of people supporting me.

There’s one more question and it’s very based around document control as well. So I’ll just cover this off because we’ve got a few minutes to go and then we might wind up. But this one says, “According to the Building Equality Policy, BEP, and the mandates for percentage employment of females within the construction industry effective by the end of this year. Document control has a large female uptake, but accordingly to the industry capability network, unless they’re physically based on site, which is not often feasible, they are not counted as being part of BEP.” That’s interesting. “Has InEight had discussions, et cetera, around ensuring our female document controllers can be counted regardless of whether they are on-site working from home or in a project office?” That’s a very in-depth question, really. And I guess from my point of view, I would even go a little bit further to say what about the companies that don’t have document controllers, but they’re expecting other people, women or men, who have other skill sets to be doing document control work?

So number one, are you valuing the document control role? But number two, around whether InEight has had discussions around this, I guess in my position as a solution engineer, I’m having discussions about the importance of document control and document controllers no matter whether they’re hybrid, on-site, or at home, or whatever. So I’m having these conversations daily, but I’m not sure if I could answer it in terms of whether that makes up a percentage of the BEP. I would think, and I would hope that no matter what role you were in in a construction job and no matter where you’re doing the work from that you are included in that, you are a part of the team. And especially document controllers, I find are very central parts of a team. They should be included in many meetings because they need to understand what processes are happening around them, and to understand where they can have an impact.

And I’m not quite sure if I’ve answered the question well, but there’s, like I say, it’s a very in-depth question. And I think it sort of pulls on a lot of other channeling questions around that as well. So feel free to contact me another time for the person that has put that through. We’re going to have another discussion about it later. But I think that’s it in terms of the questions. Have either of you got any sort of lasting comments around today’s feature of the future, how women are shaping the future of construction?

 

Sarah Roach:

Look, I’m happy to jump in first. Look, I think Brendan summed it up well earlier when he said we’ve come some way, but… Oh, look, my lights have gone off. See? We’ve come some way, but we still have somewhere to go. I was at the Australian Water Association Awards on Friday night in Sydney, and overwhelmingly, females dominated both the student and the young professional award categories, and in fact, won both of those categories. It wasn’t until the professional award that there was that kind of shift. So Water Professional of the Year had a lot more men nominated for that award. So I think that there’s a bunch of work that’s happening, particularly that I’m seeing in the early recruitment space, but perhaps more to be done in terms of the retention and development, but some good work, but some more to be done.

 

Brendan Morton:

For me, yeah, it comes back to that, the deliberate intent to change the perception. So you need to go out and action something around a lot of facets to affect the change. Conversation will only and goodwill will only get us so far. I don’t like to make sports analogies, but there is one here I wanted to touch on. I think you look at the Australian women’s cricket team, what an amazing team, just dominating, but that’s not just happened overnight. There’s been deliberate intent and investment to get that team to where they are to the point where you go back a few years and you you’d see some women’s cricket and it did look a bit clunky because they were people transferring from other sports skills, very capable sports women, but didn’t have the cricket skills. You watch that team now and you’ve got young girls that have come up playing cricket and they’re now playing, representing their country.

And to stand back from the TV and watch it, I have to look twice and go, “Am I looking at the women’s or the men’s cricket, the way they play that game? So I think that’s where we’ve got to get to is there is absolutely the now and what we need to do, but it’s that investment in what’s coming in future. Because if we don’t really address that, we’re just going to be stuck in the same old cycle with the same challenges and the same questions coming up. So again, [inaudible 00:57:43] deliberate intent. How do we invest in the next generation coming through so that we talked about earlier, that there is no barriers for females industry they might choose? It’s not saying that they all have to choose it, but we just want to move that element that says, “I’d love to do it, but it’s not for me because I’m female.” It’s, “I’d love to do it. And I might decide between that or law or commerce. That I’m free to choose. There’s no constraints or barriers to me doing that.” So that would be my summary. Ri.

 

Rianna Gates:

Oh, fantastic. Sarah and Brendan, really, really great insights today. We are so grateful for this discussion. I’ve really enjoyed it. And thank you for the audience for joining us today. I know that everybody online is likely a user of the InEight technology in some way or form, so of course, we encourage you to jump onto our website to find out any upcoming information on new webinars that are in the future. But again, thank you both, Sarah and Brendan, for sharing all of your experience with us today and we really, really appreciate your time and we’ll see everybody-

 

Sarah Roach:

Thanks for having us, Ri.

 

Rianna Gates:

[inaudible 00:58:55].

 

Brendan Morton:

Thank you.

 

Rianna Gates:

Thanks, everyone.