women In ConstruCtIon

Womenin

ConSTruCTion

VICA’s Women in Construction is a committee whose mandate is to promote and support female participation in the construction industry. With chapters in Nanaimo and Victoria, WiC hosts events that provide an opportunity to network, learn about local projects, and have some fun. Events include site tours, education and career panels, fundraising and team building events that bring a diverse group of women (and occasionally men) from accountants to engineers.

But how does a committee focused on making connections maintain its connection with members and the community during a pandemic?

“We made it our mission to continue creating valuable events,” says Kathy Price, chair of WiC Victoria. “With the commitment from our executive team, we all agreed that our network and events are so vital to our mental health; we simply were not willing to let our members down. Our members are the backbone, they provided us with patience, encouragement, and we really want to thank them for that this year.”

Price says that from the shift she was seeing in her professional career at Knappett Projects Inc., she knew that virtual events were going to be the way forward. So the WiC committee jumped right in hosting virtual site tours of the McKenzie interchange and the Site C Dam, a Pecha Kucha information event, a Meetthe-Exec social and a “CanDIYstruction” gingerbread house building contest for WiC’s Christmas Social. During a safer time, WiC was also able to host a physically distanced outdoor walking tour of Old Town. In February, the committee is holding their annual Power Women Panel where they host women from the non-profit housing sectors.

Jessica Sidhu, project manager at Kinetic Construction Ltd. and vice-chair of WiC Victoria, says that while the committee was overcoming the challenges of technology, there were some positive aspects to this change in situation.

“Attendance was more than we expected, even with everyone experiencing Zoom fatigue,” says Sidhu. “Using conferencing platforms opened up more possibilities for educational events in the future. Through all of this, the executive committee learned new skills and our members supported us by attending our events and providing feedback.”

Flattening the curve in the community meant steepening the learning curve when it came to technology. Sidhu says adjusting from in-person events to virtual tours and webinars took time and patience when creating digital content and managing conferencing platforms.

“We identified gaps in our technical skills and worked together to elevate our proficiency in the different programs we now relied on for events. There was a lot of effort involved in creating videos, slideshows, and scripts. Virtual events were a new challenge because the content needed to be finalized in advance and there was less room to improvise,” says Sidhu. “Our executive committee handled the challenge with enthusiasm.”

Price says she applauds WiC’s executive team for leaning in, reaching out, and standing up to the challenges they faced and creating these valuable events this year.

“We have heard from our members, and they were grateful for our persistence. We rely on our sponsors and supporting VICA staff to effectively run our committee, it is only with them we have been able to keep on,” says Price. “We are looking forward to the day when we can all meet again for a social networking event.”

For more information about WiC in Victoria or Nanaimo, visit vicabc.ca. n

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