Coffey Testing Technicians Maaria Pajula (left) and Mariane Cipriani (right) working in the specialty testing laboratory.
CREATING A PLACE FOR WOMEN IN
CONSTRUCTION
MATERIAL TESTING IS ONE OF THE MOST MALE-DOMINANT SECTORS IN THE CIVIL CONSTRUCTION SPACE. ROADS & INFRASTRUCTURE SPEAKS TO FIVE WOMEN WORKING IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS AT COFFEY TESTING, INCLUDING CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER DAWN WATT, ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS BUCKING THE TREND.
W
hen Dawn Watt graduated from Lethbridge College in Alberta, Canada with an Associate’s Degree in Civil Engineering nearly 24 years ago, she was one of only three female students graduating that year from a class of 33. Today, she is the Chief Executive Officer of Coffey Testing, one of Australia’s largest and oldest material testing companies. But, as she observes, little has changed in the way of 14
ROADS MARCH 2022
female representation in the industry since she started her career. “The civil construction space is still very much male-dominated. Within the large Australian material testing companies, ours is the only one with a female CEO. We also have a number of women in leadership and technical positions within our team, which is not a very common trend in the industry,” she tells Roads & Infrastructure.
The reason for low representation of women, she believes, should be sought at grassroot educational levels. “Traditionally, labouring and construction is not targeted at females in high school. So, when females at high school are working out what they want to do in the future, I don’t believe that enough emphasis is placed on those careers that have traditionally been for men,” she says.
