Crossrail Ltd is managing to fill over a third of its jobs with women compared to just one in five in the rest of the construction industry.
Says Ailie MacAdam, Central Section Delivery Director, ‘Crossrail is being built by some of the UK’s best construction and tunnelling engineers. Over the next 10 years, as an industry, we need to double the number of people with engineering qualifications to meet the demand for skills. To achieve that, more must be done to attract and retain young women to what is a fabulous and rewarding career.
Crossrail and its contractors regularly visit London schools to run engineering workshops and to inspire the next generation of construction workers and engineers. But a joint effort is needed between schools, parents, government and industry to encourage more young people, including women to pursue a construction and engineering career.’
Just 8.5% of engineers in the UK are women – the lowest representation of women in the field across all of the European Union according to the Cologne’s Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft.
