07/03/2024

CONNECT.SHARE.INSPIRE

---

In advance of Women in Construction Week, last week we joined forces with Schneider Electric, BASF, Bosch, Henkel and Bilfinger to bring together a selection of women from our companies for an exciting event: CONNECT.SHARE.INSPIRE; an inspiring day of sharing insights, celebrating the contributions of women in our industry and hearing from business leaders and experts about how we continue to raise awareness, create opportunities and make the industry an even better place for women.

Dr. Katja Scharpwinkel, Member of the Board of Executive Directors at BASF, gave an insightful keynote speech about her career journey, the obstacles she has faced and how she overcame them.

Other topics included: the power of influencing; how biological and gender heath factors affect progress in the industry; how to harness the power of compassionate leadership; and tools for maximising success.

Delegates also heard from Stacey Copeland who has represented her country in football and boxing, was the first British woman to win the Commonwealth title for boxing, and founded Pave The Way, a charity which aims to challenge gender stereotypes of girls, boys, men and women.

Our CEO and Chair Fabienne Viala spoke about her own journey through the industry and what Bouygues UK is doing to highlight the importance of promoting the vast range of opportunities for women in construction to girls in schools as well as ensuring we help provide a variety of routes into our industry for women.

In 2021 we launched our Girls Believe Academy with the aim of attracting more women into the Construction and Engineering industry by showing them how vibrant, diverse and exhilarating the industry is.

Women and girls continue to be underrepresented as users and leaders in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths, and many girls will not have considered construction or engineering as an option. We know that attracting the best talent onto our programmes is the most sustainable way to develop our future leaders.

As well as helping young women enter the industry, we strive to have a workplace that welcomes and supports everyone. We want to have a workplace that recognises the different perspectives and experiences that diversity brings, and having an inclusive culture in place which respects all individuals equally.

We look forward to many more events like CONNECT.SHARE.INSPIRE to help us to continue to share ideas and push forward our diversity and inclusion agenda even further.

To find out more about what happened during the event, watch below!