Given the career opportunities available, the impact made by the industry worldwide and the innovation happening on an ongoing basis, this no longer makes sense. Along with current global supply chain issues, the shortage of personnel is seen as the greatest challenge facing the construction industry in Ireland. Over the coming years, this is likely to be the single biggest barrier to achieving Government targets for house building, the current National Development Plan and continuing to support the growth of multi-national companies in Ireland. Over the past 20 years, I have seen the construction industry undergo significant advancement in terms of health and safet harder’ philosophy being adopted. At Ardmac, we “Work Smart”, meaning we deploy innovative technology throughout our business to empower our people, drive performance and delight our customers. To support this advancement, the types of roles within the construction industry have had to evolve with multiple new technology-based roles emerging and the level of physically demanding roles reducing. This is especially true in the high-tech sectors in which Ardmac operate. As a leading provider of complex turn-key solutions to the cleanroom and data centre sectors, our business is engineering led. We aim to employ the brightest and the best for all disciplines within the company, regardless of demographics, to ensure we continue to provide Excellence as Standard to our Clients.
Over 70%of constructionfirmsaresaidto fully recognise the need for more women in the industry. It is also clear that there is a huge shortage in construction personnel and that there are more diverse and well-paid roles availablewithin the industry. Despite all this, the uptake of construction sector roles by women remains low. A significant amount of good work has been undertaken over the past few years by organisations such as the CIF and Engineers Ireland to promote the industry as inclusive and diverse, but the sector still remains one of the most gender-segregated in the world. The reason for this appears tobedown to theperception of the industry that still exists. As part of a 2018 survey carried out by the CIF for their #BuildingEquality campaign it was suggested that the Construction Industry had an image problem. One of the comments received relating to this was as follows: “I think many women when they think of the construction industry think or hard hats, cold weather, dirty building sites and a lot of physical labour. Add to that a perception that it is male oriented, and you can see why it may not be viewed as an attractive career for a woman.” (Senior female professional) As part of Engineer’s Ireland STEPS programme for Engineering Week, I recently gave a presentation to approximately 100 female transition year students on engineering as a career. When I asked the group what their impression of the construction industry and engineering as a career was, much of the initial feedback I received was in line with the above quote.
15
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online