Market Insight – Women in Construction

Speakers

Suzannah Nichol, Chief Executive, Build UK

Suzannah is the Chief Executive of Build UK, the leading representative organisation for the UK construction industry.Inspired by a site visit during a week’s work experience, she achieved a degree in Construction Management before starting her career as a site engineer. She then qualified as a health and safety professional before taking over the reins at the National Specialist Contractors’ Council.

After 13 years leading the specialist sector, Suzannah was the driving force behind the merger to form Build UK, bringing the industry together within one organisation. Under her leadership, Build UK is at the forefront of improving business performance, increasing productivity and recruiting, training and retaining talent across the industry.

A passionate advocate for construction, Suzannah is recognised and respected for her work with government, media and key industry stakeholders. She was awarded an MBE in 2005, was one of the first Timewise Power Part-Timers, is a member of the Construction Leadership Council and the Women’s Business Council.

Suzannah loves being outdoors, one of the reasons she joined the construction industry, spending as much of her time as she can in the fresh air walking her devoted golden retriever Ted, playing netball or sailing. During the last year her desk in the garden has become a familiar site on all those zoom calls.

Tanja Rasmusson, Policy Director, Swedish Construction Federation (Byggföretagen)

Tanja Rasmusson joined the Swedish Construction Federation (Byggföretagen) since September 2018 as Policy Director. She holds degrees in Psychology and Law, and has extensive experience of the Swedish political arena.

In 2000-06 she was Political Adviser for the Moderate Party on legal and constitutional affairs. She went on to serve in the Government Offices 2006-14, at the Ministries for Justice, Defence, and Foreign Affairs. After the 2014 elections, she went on to work with trade-related international development at the Swedish Board of Trade.

Rasmusson resides in Stockholm with her two daughters.

Quote: “The Construction Business is crucial in building a strong, sustainable society in Sweden, with homes, workplaces and the roads in between for everyone, in their everyday lives. I am proud to be part of an organization that is clearly headed towards the future, prioritizing sustainability in all three dimensions – not least the social dimension. We want to be an attractive business for young, bright, dedicated people, especially women. If we are to stay competitive and drive innovation, we can’t afford to leave out half of the workforce. Gender equality is simply smart business.”

Rebecca Lovelace, Founder and Chief Dot-joiner, Building People

Rebecca is Founder and Chief Dot-joiner at Building People, a social enterprise that is creating diverse connections across the built environment. Building People is bringing people, organisations, knowledge, opportunities and needs together to address the industry challenges of skills, diversity and social value.

Building People is a free-to-use ecosystem and platform that aggregates and integrates with industry-wide activity, enabling people to find employers, opportunities and resources, and employers to connect with a more diverse range of talent.

The vision of Building People is a Built Environment that improves social and economic value by being better connected, more diverse and inclusive, with access to the talent it needs to solve its current and future challenges. This vision is being delivered through the development of a digital platform and a ‘network of networks’ that brings together a diverse and innovative audience to widen the industry talent pool.

A core value of Building People is that it aggregates and brings together providers and activity in one single place, therefore does not duplicate nor reinvent, but seeks to collaborate, amplify voices, drive traffic and to add value across industry.

Rebecca has twenty years experience in creating, connecting and enabling organisations, networks and partnerships across the Built Environment. Her focus is strategic employment and skills and her passion is ‘joining the dots’ between existing industry initiatives to enable more (diverse and disadvantaged) people to access and succeed in Built Environment careers.

Rebecca is a co-founder of BuildForce, the industry initiative to facilitate connections between ex-military and industry employers, where she set up and delivered the first two phases of the initiative. Until recently Rebecca was on the BuildForce steering group and remains involved in the successes of BuildForce today.

Prior to Building People, Rebecca founded a niche consultancy (Circle Three Consulting), where she developed and delivered employment and skills/social inclusion/local community engagement and diversity programmes to industry. Rebecca set up Circle Three after seven years at Lendlease as a Community Development Manager where she co-founded Be Onsite, a non-profit company providing training and job opportunities for disadvantaged people in the property sector.

Before discovering the world of the Built Environment Rebecca worked in the humanitarian aid and homelessness sectors. Rebecca has an MSc in Urban Regeneration and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Pia Höök, Vice President for Culture, Skanska Group

Pia Höök is Vice President for Culture at Skanska Group. She has been with Skanska since 2012 and have both worked within HR and Sustainability. Global Diversity & Inclusion has always been in her portfolio of responsibilities.

Prior to working for Skanska, Pia was Global Diversity Director for Volvo Group. She has a PhD from Stockholm School of Economics (2001) and in 2010 she became an Associate Professor of “Organization, management and gender” at the Royal Institute of Technology.

She has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and has also served as an expert to the Swedish Government in governmental studies and delegations on gender equality in business and academia.

LinkedIn

Britta Blaxhult, CEO, Selvaag Bostad AB

Britta holds a Master of Science Degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and is also a mechanical engineer. During her twenty years of experience in the construction sector, Britta worked with business development at NCC, Veidekke and Einar Mattson.

Additionally, Britta worked as property and project manager for the City of Stockholm. Since 2019, Britta is the CEO of Selvaag Bostad AB, the Swedish branch of the Norwegian residential property developer Selvaag Bolig.

LinkedIn

Lauren Bennett, Director, Mace

Lauren’s most recent experience with Mace is as an Associate Director, leading the procurement, in country setup, pre-construction and start on site for a number of automated operating fulfilment systems internationally. Lauren has recently delivered fulfilment systems in Stockholm, Paris, Toronto, Orlando, Detroit and Montreal.

Prior to this Lauren was the Commercial Lead for the Rugby Football Union’s East Stand Station Extension in London, a major structural extension and fit out of the existing East Stand to provide world class hospitality at the home of Rugby.

Lauren has also worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office delivering FCO embassies and ambassador’s residence projects in a number of locations including Moscow, Abuja, Vientiane, Houston and Addis Ababa.

Lauren’s early experience was as a Commercial Manager on two of the UK’s largest construction and events programmes; the 2012 Olympic Games and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Lauren has also undertaken a construction and property based business acquisition and set up in Toronto, Canada. A Chartered Surveyor through the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS), in 2015 Lauren successfully joined the board of assessors at the RICS in the United Kingdom.

LinkedIn

Cristina Lanz Azcarate, Regional Chair, National Association of Women in Construction

Regional Chair for the National Association of Women in Construction, Cristina is a Mentor at the pan-professional Fluid Mentoring Programme since 2013, and since the start of 2017 she has been a member of RIBA’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advisory Group and Architects For Change.

Throughout her twenty years career in the UK, Cristina, a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), has seen the best projects emerge when the people sitting around the table, both at the office and on-site, reflected the diversity of the communities they were shaping and hence the desire to engage a wider audience with her work.

Cristina is one of the Founding Signatories of the new RIBA's ( Inclusion Charter which proposes a cultural change to break down barriers and make architecture more inclusive.

LinkedIn

Sandra Mobaraki, @Byggsandra

Sandra Mobaraki runs the digital construction platform @Byggsandra, from which she works to make the construction industry more accessible and diverse. She uses her platform to challenge and change conceptions of and attract more women to the sector.

Sandra is also the founder of “Women of the construction sector”, one of the industry’s fastest growing networks. As a lecturer, adviser and communicator, she is passionate about developing the construction industry in Sweden.

Sandra is the co-founder of the “Construction’s woman of the year Award”, where she works with the Swedish Construction Federation (Byggföretagen) to highlight female role models from the construction industry.

LinkedIn

Holly Price, Director, Skills and Communities, Keltbray Group

Holly Price has led the Training, Development and Social Value functions at Keltbray Group since 2007, playing a crucial role in engineering sustainable and considerable growth through getting the right people in the right place at the right time.

Holly started her career in the construction industry at just 17 training to be an Engineer and went on to become Europe’s only female Explosives Engineer in the sector.

She is also President of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors. Having witnessed the challenges that the industry was facing in terms of a potential skills shortage, she decided to move into a more people focussed role and is helping Keltbray go from strength to strength.

LinkedIn

Jessica Löfström, founder and Chair of the Board, Expandera Mera

Jessica Löfström is the founder and chair of the board of Sweden’s largest construction and installation recruitment company Expandera Mera Byggbemanning. She is also one of the founders of the women’s network 17. In 2018, she received the Royal Patriotic Society’s Business and Industry medal for her successful work and leadership of Expandera Mera.

Jessica was the CEO of Expandera until 2018, when she moved to become a working member of the company’s board. For a number of years, Jessica has been listed as one of the most powerful women in Swedish business and industry by one of Sweden’s most influential daily newspaper Dagens Industri, and was given the price for Business Achievement in 2016 from another of the largest dailies in Sweden, SvD.

She is currently working as a Senior advisor at ANSVAR.NU, where she focuses on sustainable building and construction.

LinkedIn

Olivia Perkins, Senior Project Manager, Kier Infrastructure

Olivia Perkins is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Senior Project Manager, currently leading the VolkerFitzpatrick Kier Joint Venture delivering the Luton DART Cableway.

Since the start of her career, Olivia has worked on a number of major infrastructure projects with Kier Group including Crossrail’s Tottenham Court Road Station civils works and tunnel construction and on High Speed 2, managing the design delivery and cost planning of over 150 permanent works structures, co-ordinating with multiple teams and external stakeholders.

In 2016, Olivia won the James Rennie Medal for her Chartered Professional Review project report on her experiences at Crossrail.

Quote: ‘I am very pleased to be part of this event, to share my experiences to date and find ways to increase diversity in all forms in construction, for the benefit of the industry’.

LinkedIn

Leia Büsra Yildiz, Site manager, Implenia Sweden

Leia is a site manager working with Implenia Sweden since 2017. She currently surveys part of the work Implenia is doing with one of the focal points of Stockholm’s infrastructure, Slussen, where the company has been building the new central bus terminal since 2018.

Leia previously worked Construction Company Backströms, where she worked as a contract engineer with a focus on project management.