Moving from a gender to an inclusion focus: a Q&A with Building People Founder Rebecca Lovelace
Posted on: 30 July, 2024
Does construction and the built environment need to change its approach to equality, diversity and inclusion? We spoke with Rebecca Lovelace, Founder of Building People, to find out.
It’s a well-known fact that the construction industry is lacking in diversity. While some progress has been made in improving its attractiveness to underrepresented groups, females currently make up just 15.8% of the construction workforce in the UK as the industry struggles to shake off its male-dominated reputation.
However, with the built environment facing a major skills shortage – 41% of construction professionals are predicted to have retired by 2031 – organisations and business leaders no longer have a choice when it comes to promoting Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). If our sector fails to attract talent and change how it’s perceived by underrepresented groups, the consequences could be disastrous for businesses, property owners and the built environment as a whole.
Visit the Be Part of the Change site >
In our latest Q&A we sat down with Rebecca Lovelace, Founder and Chief Dot-joiner of Building People – a hub for EDI in the built environment that’s on a mission to improve representation across the sector by enabling and empowering a collaborative movement for inclusive change. Rebecca gave us her perspective on the state of diversity in the sector, the importance of collaboration, and her take on whether we need to move from a gender to an inclusion focus to improve representation.
This interview was conducted by Charlotte Thackeray, Outreach and Inclusion Lead, and Daniel Ashton, Content Marketing Manager.
About Rebecca
Rebecca Lovelace is the Founder and Chief Dot-joiner at Building People CIC. She is also a member of the People and Skills Network + Culture group with the Construction Leadership Council, and Deputy Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee at the Construction Industry Council. Rebecca was the inaugural winner of CIOB’s Equality, Inclusion and Diversity individual award and named one of the top 100 most influential women in construction by the NFB in 2022.
Q: How did you end up working in the built environment?
A: It was completely accidental. After university, I started my career in the homelessness sector, which is interesting because it’s about people that don’t have physical space to have a home in the built environment. My goal at the time was to end up in international humanitarian aid, which was my real passion, but I swiftly realised that to do that you need to do an internship, which certainly wasn’t paid in those days.
My temp agency rang up and said ‘Rebecca, we’ve got the most wonderful job for you’. It was on a construction site, so of course I thought, ‘ooh, portacabins, dust’, you know, all the awful stereotypes of construction. When I turned up in central London however, it was a really swanky office and completely different to all my expectations.
I spent six weeks as a receptionist and site secretary and – through the connections I had made – was ultimately able to apply for a vacancy and move permanently to Lendlease, where I ran a London programme connecting people from underrepresented groups to jobs and training in the Lendlease supply chain. It was a brilliant eye opener to the world of construction and also began my passion for collaboration, not duplicating effort and joining the dots between multiple and fragmented initiatives.
At this time, this fell under the remit of ‘community development’, which became Corporate Social Responsibility and has now morphed into Social Value and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), so there wasn’t really a formal space for what I was trying to achieve. This changed when I co-founded Be Onsite, Lendlease’s not-for-profit company helping people build built environment careers, and I saw how a strategic and practical focus on supply and demand, underrepresentation and skills shortages could really make a difference.
After maternity leave, I was made redundant and formed Circle Three Consulting, always focusing on what I called ‘construction – community – connection’. A key achievement here was co-founding BuildForce, a construction industry programme supporting Service leavers and veteran into careers within industry. Again, people, skills, careers and connections. Then we get to 2017. I was talking to a potential client and asking, ‘why isn’t there one place that brings together all of these initiatives that work with the underrepresented groups the sector needs?’, and she said ‘well, why don’t you create that one place?’ So that’s what I did – I put my business on hold and set up Building People.
I won’t say it’s been easy, but we’ve since developed a network of over sixty providers working with underrepresented groups in the sector, delivered expertise and guidance to leadership – pushing for a ‘one voice’ strategic and joined-up approach to EDI in the built environment – and have created a portal that brings people, needs and opportunities together, simplifying user journeys and enabling collaboration.
Q: Do you see an issue with the way the construction industry is recognised and perceived?
A: I think it’s widely accepted that the image of the construction industry is really poor – so much so that there are people actively saying we should stop using the word ‘construction’ (‘built environment’ is the term we use at Building People).
Many people interpret construction as being when they have their loft done, or their neighbour has an extension – they don’t truly see the massive construction sites with really clever technology like Building Information Modelling or the use of drones. Our image is still poor, and it’s causing a huge problem in terms of attracting people to come into the sector. Retention, of course, is a whole other issue…
What you then have is a kind of ‘chicken and egg’ situation, because we want to see more people from underrepresented groups succeeding within the sector and thus evidencing positive change, but it’s very hard to attract people in unless this is obvious – you can’t be what you can’t see – and not all differences are visible.
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing underrepresented groups in the built environment?
A: One example, why isn’t job sharing more successful? Why is it so hard to have a role on site where people job share, because they may have caring responsibilities or other requirements outside of work? Flexibility of working hours and the attitudes towards this model are one of the biggest challenges women face in the sector. Unfortunately, this is a big problem construction has as it’s part of how the sector operates – it’s all really tight margins and we have to remember that the sector is predominantly made up of small or micro businesses, where the reality is simply not the same as at main contractor level. The sector rarely feels actively collaborative, but competitive.
Learn more: Could flexible working be the key to greater diversity in construction?
Other examples include the lack of appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), particularly if you’re pregnant, which is an issue that campaigners are working to raise awareness of. Then, of course, there’s the challenge of toilet provision for all, or the lack of appropriate facilities for those that want a place where they’re able to wash and worship.
What I think this requires is a fundamental shift to a focus on inclusive behaviours and cultural intelligence, from an attitude of ‘you need to change’ to ‘I need to understand how to function effectively in culturally diverse situations’, or to quote Marsha Ramroop, Building People’s Executive Director for EDI, ‘inclusion isn’t about other people and their identities, it’s about us and our behaviours.’
To me, what is vital is bringing together and amplifying the voices of the many organisations that provide built environment careers support to people from underrepresented groups. There’s a brilliant organisation called the Register of Tradeswomen. It has a simple premise, which is about providing training to women who have survived domestic abuse to that they can become tradeswomen and can go into the homes, or refuges, of women that might not want a man in there. This is underrepresentation + social value + skills gap – why is this organisation struggling for funding? Why is it not being scooped up by the sector, supported and enabled to grow?
Learn more: Bridging the gender PPE gap: why ill-fitting workwear is hampering equality
Q: What is the biggest challenge employers face in the built environment when trying to improve their EDI?
A: I think the challenge is that most organisations are small or micro businesses, and they’re focusing on survival and delivery, so they don’t have the resource to tackle the issue of EDI. Many organisations think they need an EDI specialist, or an entire department, but for me, it’s about integrating that inclusive approach across the whole business. EDI shouldn’t just be a function that sits in HR, it needs to come from the leadership down all the way through the organisation. With this in mind, I’d say the biggest barrier is really the full understanding of what needs to be done – and how. This is why I’m pushing for joined-up and strategic leadership from the sector to drive forward a unified approach that supports all to understand what can be done, why and how.
Learn more: Joined Up Leadership for an Inclusive Built Environment – Summary Report
Q: Why is it important that we bring people from underrepresented groups into the sector?
A: From a gender perspective, the blindingly obvious reason is that over 50% of the people in the UK (and on the planet) are female. Why on Earth are we living in environments that aren’t designed, planned, built and maintained by people in this group? And, of course, all the diversity that sits within it, such as sexuality, disability and socioeconomic perspectives.
I was fortunate enough to win the CIOB’s inaugural EDI award last year. I went up on stage and was asked, ‘why is EDI so important to the built environment?’ My – very much from the heart response was – that, when I leave this event and walk to get the train home and then to my car, I want to feel safe. I don’t want to feel vulnerable because I want my experience, my journey, to have been designed by somebody who’s like me. For me, it’s that diversity of thought. The built environment should be designed by people thinking of accessibility needs – in my example, thinking about the lighting, safe routes and pathways; but we need all types of people to be part of this process, with a focus on neurodiversity and wellbeing of great importance too. Everything needs to be looked at with an inclusion lens – it’s absolutely vital.
Learn more: Sexism and the city: are buildings and cities sexist?
Q: How has Building People helped raise awareness of underrepresented groups in construction?
A: I’d say this is the piece I’m most proud of and it’s the genesis of where Building People began – there are many organisational initiatives around working with underrepresented groups, but where are they, and how do we access them?
We initially wanted to create a simple directory of where these organisations were and this developed into a portal, a network and a lobbying vehicle. However, the role of Building People isn’t just bringing groups together, but also amplifying their voices, helping promote what they do and connecting them.
We run events – we actually had one recently on how to talk to young people in Generation Z. It gives organisations in our network a chance to talk to a far wider audience about what they do. Rather than going to 60 odd websites and asking who’s got a job board or who’s running events, you can look on Building People and see aggregated event lists, vacancies, and resources. We do that in nowhere near as much detail as I’d like because we’re such a tiny organisation with minimal resource, but I think we’re pretty good at what we’ve done so far with such a limited budget.
Then there’s the work we do with strategic lobbying. For me, this really hits home. The key piece is the Skills Plan produced by the Construction Leadership Council (CLC). We brought our network together, amplified their voices and called for a bottom-up approach. We said, ‘this is great, but you could do more, and we could help’. That led to the CLC committing to an equity and diversity plan for the sector, and I’m so proud that we collectively made that happen.
Learn more: Equality, diversity, and inclusion in the built environment: a student panel
Q: You also co-founded BuildForce. Why did you feel like the link between the military and the construction industry was so vital?
A: There are a great number of people leaving the Armed Forces, and with our sector having a real issue around skills shortages and recognising the value that Service leavers and veterans bring, I – and others – thought ‘right, let’s do something about it’. That’s where BuildForce came from.
BuildForce was actually the genesis for Building People, because after my role ended, I thought ‘let’s look at resolving this fragmentation from a fully inclusive perspective, e.g. including race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, age, criminal justice, socioeconomic status and gender.’
I have this constant desire to make connections and join the dots. Hence ‘Chief Dot-Joiner.’
Q: Why is collaboration on EDI initiatives such a challenge?
A: I think it comes down to the tight margins in the sector I spoke about earlier, and the transactional relationships. competition and fragmentation of the sector. For example, every contractor that is bidding for work will always want to show why they’re different – they want a unique initiative that brings benefit to their organisation and brand. So it is often a case of creating ‘our own’ initiatives, rather than coming together to support something that benefits all. This makes funding for businesses such as Building People – where we cover all trades, professions, regions and audiences – hugely problematic. We have to respond to the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question, rather than ‘what’s in it for us?’.
That said, I take my hat off to the B*E*Inclusive initiative, where six major institutes are working together on EDI in the sector and showing real practical collaboration and leadership. It’s the first time I’ve seen this in over twenty years in the sector and it makes me very happy.
Q: What will be the knock-on effects of this lack of collaboration?
A: The biggest impact is what we’re seeing now – we don’t have enough anywhere near enough a sufficiently competent and diverse workforce. In a sector that hasn’t got an attractive recruitment culture, has huge retention issues and cannot resolve its fragmentation, with a primary focus on tight profit margins and the bottom line, this means we’re nowhere near as successful as we could be.
Learn more: What is the green skills gap (and why does it matter)?
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Find out more and get involved with the Be Part of the Change campaign by visiting the homepage, and if you’d like to get in touch with our Student Ambassadors for EDI, email outreachandinclusion@ucem.ac.uk
