07 March 2024
A message from our MD Julie White
I was absolutely thrilled to be invited to 10 Downing Street earlier this week for an event to celebrate International Women’s Day.
It was a humbling, inspiring and eye-opening experience in the company of some truly incredible women from a broad range of backgrounds and businesses.
The Government was looking to highlight the work it is doing to promote women and some of the roles they undertake across business and society.
For me, to see and hear from more than 150 dynamic women from industry, health, charities and the armed forces left me in awe and gave me real food for thought.
As anyone who has met me knows, I am passionate about construction and I want to ensure that we get more women coming into the industry. It has provided me with an incredible career and plays such an important part in our economy and, indeed, our daily lives.
One in ten people in employment throughout the UK is connected to the construction sector and for every £1 invested in infrastructure, £3 is generated in economic value.
We provide the roads, rail, bridges, houses, hospitals, schools and every single building and piece of infrastructure you can think of. We maintain them too.
That is why I’m so proud of the industry and it’s why I am delighted to be a female business owner, running a company that has branches across the country and contributing through Build UK, the Government’s Small Business Council and the Drilling & Sawing Association to the conversations around how we improve.
Getting more women and girls into construction is one of those areas where we’ve made great strides. The proportion of the workforce who are women sits at around 15 per cent which is up on pre-pandemic levels but we can do more and we must work harder and harder to get even better. Having been so inspired earlier this week, it is something I will ensure remains firmly on the agenda as we move forward.
Later this month we will be taking thousands of young people behind the scenes of sites and workplaces across the country as part of Open Doors 2024. The week-long event from Monday 18 – Saturday 23 March, delivered by Build UK, will showcase the fantastic range of careers available in construction, and we are encouraging the whole supply chain to get behind it and help recruit the next generation.
And I hope to see lots of young people, girls – as well as boys – on sites too to show them just how incredible an industry this is.
For more information on Open Doors click here.
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