FUTURE LEADERS
A woman’s place One hundred years after the founding of the Womens’ Engineering Society (WES) the building engineering sector is still struggling to get a good gender diversity balance. Engineering professions in general – and building engineering in particular – will not be able to meet future business goals without a far more gender diverse workforce. According to the Office for National Statistics, just 8% of British engineers are women and BESA is backing the aim of the WES Centenary Campaign to raise that figure to 30% by 2030. WES was founded just a year after the Suffragette movement finally secured votes for women and to celebrate this major milestone, BESA is also launching a ‘Woman Engineer of the Year’ Award, which will recognise a woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the work of the Association and has championed the role of women in building services. Reanna Evans, chair of BESA Future Leaders and CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year 2018, believes the way the industry is changing should make it more appealing to women. “Women are good team players,” she says. “We are also very process-driven, which is just what the industry needs right now as it looks to adopt more modern methods. Rather like a pride of lions, you don’t need an alpha male to get something done and we function much better as part of a diverse team rather than trying to push through ideas on our own.”
The BESA Board has also decided that the Future Leaders will have a place on BESA Council from now on so they can influence policy decisions and help set the agenda for the future of the Association and the wider industry. Reanna believes a key strategy will be ensuring that contractors work more closely with the design professions to ensure their designs can be delivered in practices. “The new generation is naturally more collaborative and we are forging more links between the different building services professions,” she says The Future Leaders are also making a particular push to encourage 12 to 13 year olds to look at engineering. “We want to offer them a placement in the industry and show them what is possible. We will show them BIM, estimating and planning; how things work on site – and the opportunities in m&e, which most of them don’t know about. “We want to show them what a great career this can be. I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from building something for the future. If I have worked on a hospital, then I have helped to save lives…It is not the building services themselves, but what they do that really matters – and this is a powerful message to give to a young person considering where they are going to make their career. www.theBESA.com/future-leaders
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