Debbie Smith, Cohesive’s Director of Services (APAC), explains why groups like Women in BIM are
so vital to building a diverse infrastructure workforce.
Gisele Marks, a qualified civil environmental engineer, has one stand-out ‘SHE-roe’ – her Mum. “Born in 1933, she mastered calculus and Latin in a time when the options did not include a college education or encourage girls to take these types of courses,” Gisele explains.
“She put it to use by ensuring everyone around the dinner table learned vocabulary words from the dictionary and introduced us to spatial mathematic activities such as tangrams, Legos, Tinker Tots, and trains. Little did we know she was mentoring us into science and mathematics journeys.”
Today, Gisele, a civil environmental engineer, is a senior solution architect at Cohesive, the Bentley Systems digital integrator and asset management consulting specialist. She uses her knowledge and experience to collaborate with teams of cross disciplinary professionals and subject matter experts to implement and use asset management technology to meet business goals focused on maintaining the value of their assets.
But stories like Gisele’s, are still too rare. Women remain under-represented in engineering with 2021 figures from the Women’s Engineering Society, for example, indicating that, in the UK, 16.5 per cent of engineers are women.
Nor is there a gap just in relation to gender. The mix of engineers also lacks cultural diversity and diversity of skills. Today our profession needs data engineers and data specialists as much as we need the ‘traditional’ engineering disciplines. Why? Because only by ‘going digital’ can we help our sector move away from its traditional hallmarks: over-cost and over-time programmes, and carbon heavy and inefficient delivery and instead become sustainable, modern, streamlined and efficient.
In the UK, the imbalance of role needs set against availability was underlined in a recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, It stated that that plans for major infrastructure programmes were not matched by the “necessary skills and capacity” to deliver them. A survey, the Construction Skills Network 2023
survey, found that one fifth of construction professionals believe construction talent shortages over the next five to 10 years will be caused by a shortage of digital and technology skills.
Bringing about the change needed will require continued initiatives like STEM programmes in schools and
universities and the capture and monitoring of data around recruitment and retention. But it also very much requires work around the ‘culture’ associated with engineering and infrastructure roles and building connections between people at all levels that can help to promote the cause. We need diverse people to want to come to join our teams and to aspire to roles in digital engineering and infrastructure asset technology.
It is because we are passionate about this cause that Cohesive is a keen supporter and champion of Women in BIM and its events. David Philp, our Chief Value Officer, and a prominent ally of women in construction and infrastructure, has been involved since WIB was conceived and is WIB Regional Lead for Scotland.
Cohesive is a sponsor of the WIB Melbourne event, which will take place on 14 November. I will be
contributing to the panel discussion: “Creating value beyond the hype: A digital-first approach – how do we bring about transformational change?”
I’ll be drawing on the experience I have gained during my 37-year career as an expert in asset information
management, helping clients across many industries to more effectively manage their information as they
embark on their digital transformation journey.
We are proud to be playing our part in modernising our industry and building a welcoming culture around it. I hope you can join us in Melbourne.
To learn more about Cohesive’s work in supporting asset intensive organisations and owner operators to
unlock value by exploiting new technologies and digital ways of working and in helping teams to adapt to the digital age, please contact us.
