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advocate for change
HOW THE ACA CORRECTED THE GENDER IMBALANCE IN THE BOARDROOM TO DRIVE POSITIVE CHANGE ACROSS THE INDUSTRY by Meg Redwin Executive Director - General Counsel, Multiplex Vice President, ACA & NAWIC Awards for Excellence Judge (NSW)
Often on issues like gender there is a lot of discussion and good intentions and real change takes an age to get enacted. In April 2019 I was involved in a change that was bold and effective. The Australian Constructors Association (ACA) is an organisation comprised of the 20 largest contractors across Australia by turnover. The issues which are at the core of the NAWIC membership are also concerns of the ACA. The focus is on building a sustainable industry by improving diversity and the health and well-being of the workforce, improving outcomes on projects and impacts on the built environment. The board of the ACA is made up of the CEOs of the member organisations and not surprisingly in 2019 the board table was occupied by 20 men. Like most organisations in the construction industry it had been debating for years how to get diversity into the industry and deal with the cultural issues that we all know exist. In 2019, an idea was floated to stop discussing the issue and to just make a change to the rules: each member company would have two co-directors, one male and one female, and most importantly the codirectors were to be regarded as equal, empowered to represent the entity as the CEO for the purposes of 94
the ACA and to attend meetings separately on behalf of the company. When John Flecker, CEO of Multiplex, rang to ask me what I thought, I was excited at the idea and the opportunity it presented. It seemed to me that rather than a lot more talking, here was a practical suggestion that might change the dynamic in the room with an organisation that for 20 plus years had been almost entirely male engineers. If the board meetings and running of the ACA could change that dynamic, then that may cascade into the construction companies themselves. Of course there were a few hiccups - why were a number of the appointed female co-directors lawyers? The answer was why were so many of the male codirectors engineers? Why were there not more senior women in operational roles who could function as co-directors? Again, a good question to make an organisation ponder - why don’t you have a senior enough woman who is in that role? Could you have someone? At the first meeting following the decision there were three of us women in the room and I asked Annabel Crookes, Director, Laing O’Rourke and NAWIC member, who was one of those women what she thought:
THE NAWIC JOURNAL
