On Wednesday 19th June CIHT West Midlands Women's Network hosted a celebration of women's achievements and male allies in Highways & Transportation at the WSP Offices in Birmingham. About 30 transport professionals attended to hear from 10 shortlisted women and 5 male allies about their experiences and achievements in the industry. It was an evening full of inspiration, sharing successes, achievements and feeling proud of how women in the West Midlands regions are delivering brilliant projects, listening and working for the community, and actively working on EDI within their organisation or even in different countries. 

Want to know more about what CIHT does to celebrate International Women in Engineering Day? 

Here is a summary of the women, achievements, and allies highlighted in the event

Charlie White - Assistant Site Manager, Octavius Infrastructure

Charlie is a member of CECA NextGen, and wanting to "give back" and promote STEM careers, she teamed up with a group of young professionals to develop a Children’s book aimed at 5-8 year olds to explore the world of construction and the built environment.

The book, Sammi on Site, follows a gender-neutral digger on their day at site, meeting friends such as Gill the concrete truck, and Ella the environmentalist. It has proven to be a big success at Brownie groups, young people groups, with parents and with teachers. The book took over a year of voluntary time to develop and was published in April 2024.

Rachel Long - Associate Director, AtkinsRealis

Rachel volunteers with PIARC as a World Road Association Technical Committee member & Communications Lead on the Performance of Transport Administrations. She is and ED&I Champion & mum of 2. 

In her role she leads Customer and People initiatives in the AtkinsRealis Digital Asset Management Practice to bring a people focused approach into the solutions the business develops and delivers. Rachel highlighted the need to design and deliver around the needs, capabilities and limitations of people right from the beginning. Something she and her team won the Customer Focused Team of the Year Award for in 2023 for their work with National Highways on RIS3 Investment Planning.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion is also changing the sector. The initiatives developed in Rachel's team have been adopted across the organisation and shared with clients. Work which was shortlisted for the CIHT West Midlands ED&I award this year.

Gillian Gregory CEng FCIHT - Associate Technical Director, Arcadis

Over the course of her career, Gillian has contributed to the Highways and Transportation industry by attended numerous events to promote engineering, talking to young students from schools, colleges, and universities.

For her employer she undertook the Highways Technical Lead Role on the HS2 Project where she assessed the digital requirements of the project. For Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), Gillian has taken time to talk to young ladies to give them in insight into engineering, in particularly with activities related to Highway Design.

Rachel Rock - Principal Transport Delivery Officer, Birmingham City Council

Rachel joined Birmingham City Council's Transport Projects team in March 2020 as a Transport Delivery Officer and was involved in the rapid response implementation of COVID-19 measures in Birmingham. She excelled in a transport and engineering environment, and successfully completed an apprenticeship with APM, obtaining a project management qualification. She secured successive promotions to Senior Transport Delivery Officer in 2021 and Principal Transport Delivery Officer in 2023.

She project managed the £40m A457 Dudley Road Improvement Scheme which was shortlisted for a CIHT West Midlands award. Rachel is also a committee member of CIHT West Midlands CIHT and is eager to champion the changing image of the transport infrastructure industry, and help to make it a more appealing, diverse and inclusive career for everyone.

Eur Ing Chrysa Gkotsopoulou MEng MSc CEng MCIHT - Principal Engineer, COWI UK

Chrysa holds an MEng in Civil Engineering and MSc in Engineering Project Management and has successfully led multiple highway projects, as well as project managing and providing technical leadership for onshore and offshore windfarm projects in the UK and abroad. Chrysa has team- and line managed various teams, supporting individuals professional growth within the highways sector as a supervising civil engineer and sponsor also.

As an LGBTQI+ activist, Chrysa campaigned for same sex families' rights in Greece.

Holly Louise Clapp - Degree Apprentice Transport Planner, Arcadis

Holly won the CIHT West Midlands Emerging Apprentice Award this year. She is active as a mentor and advocates for emerging professionals. Holly champions sustainable transport and carbon reduction work including training and sustainability tools.

In her presentation Holly shared about the importance of celebrating women's achievements for visibility, empowerment and change.

Zahraa Kadri - Senior Consultant, Arup

Zahraa is an award-winning Chartered Mathematician with over 10 years’ experience across the transportation and infrastructure sectors. She has extensive experience of asset valuations, decision support tools, data analytics and customer insights in the transport sector.

In 2020, Zahraa was awarded one of the Twenty Women in Data and Tech UK where she was recognised for her work on data analysis for the safety of road users. She is on her second cycle as a Young Professional member of PIARC on the Technical Committee 3.3 Asset Management. In the previous cycle she co-authored a global survey to capture information on aging infrastructure geographically and countries with varying income levels.

She is the Chair of the UK PIARC Young Professionals (YP) network and is passionate about progression of YPs in the road sector. Zahraa has contributed to the development of new ISO standard ISO 55013 Guidance on data in asset management.

Sanah Khalid - NEC4 Accredited Project Manager, National Highways

Sanah is an APM qualified and NEC4 Accredited project manager. She is currently working towards her Chartership CHPP in APM. Sanah managed the first Project with National Highways to conduct diversion works without a DIP on board. She worked on a project which received the CIHT West Midlands Collaboration Award and also mentors Graduates and Apprentices.

Sanah has delivered talks at Coventry University and is an Ambassador for BAME in TFL and also chairs a BAME group within National Highways which has run a letters to my younger self initiative. She also piloted and contributed towards the EDI module at National Highways.

Elodie Arsicaud - Associate Director, Waterman Aspen

Elodie collated company data, statistics and research to demonstrate how a Women’s Network brings benefits to both employees and to Waterman Aspen as a business. This was a catalyst for many successful initiatives within Waterman Aspen, including the appointment of a Menopause Champion and a podcast.
 
She presented various proposals to the Board and organised a forum session on International Women’s Day where 3 female role models in leadership positions spoke about their careers and challenges they had faced. Afterwards she collected feedback and submitted a business case. The inaugural Waterman Aspen Women's Network event was held in June 2023!

Hannah Willets - Head of HS2 Delivery, Birmingham City Council

Hannah is passionate about the work she does and has been involved in a rich variety of schemes from planning & development, regeneration and transportation. 

Hannah shared that it’s essential to celebrate women’s achievements in this industry. Women are able to play an equal part to our male counterparts and can add great value in terms of helping to shape the environment from a different perspective. Promoting this rewarding and diverse career path and seeing other women achieving in this sector is essential to encourage women and girls to consider this as a future career.

Hannah is delivering several multi-million projects for Birmingham City Council, including the public realm enhancement schemes for Digbeth High Street and Curzon Street.

John Paterson - Technical Director, Digital Asset Management Practice, AtkinsRéalis

John is using his position to support the growth of his colleagues and open opportunities with PIARC UK. He also encouraged looking for the potential in others and to carefully and persistently test, challenge and support.

Paul Unwin - Regional Sponsor, National Highways

Paul is passionate about encouraging and supporting new leadership talent, investing time in identifying and nurturing potential, and encouraging and mentoring colleagues at all levels to be leaders. He is also a visiting lecturer and student mentor at 4 universities in West Midlands.

Javaid Amin - Senior Director, Arcadis

Javaid helps unlock his mentee’s potential to maximise their impact through his diverse experience of various cultures over many years. It is the duty of men in the industry to create awareness and promote a positive culture to bring more women into our industry.

Rich Marshall - Director, National Highways

Rich emphasised the importance of male allyship in our industry to help address the fact that the qualities and capabilities of women are not always valued equally – advocating for fairness, equity and an inclusive workplace not only helps individuals and teams, but also organisations, succeed.

Matthew Moss - Senior Engineer, Kier & Chair of CIHT West Midlands

Matt uses his position to raise his voice for ED&I within Kier by being an active part of the social value team and promoting their achievements. He considers it the responsibility of men in the industry to ensure that women in engineering are heard and including into projects and extra-curricular activities as much as possible.

I think that demonstrating the benefits to everyone of fairness, inclusion and respect, would encourage other men in our sector to take on the role of male allies. This includes hosting events in the workplace and advertising ED&I events to as many divisions as possible.

In conclusion, celebrating the achievements of women in the sector, including non-engineers, helps illustrate how difference contributes to the evolution of the industry and encourages greater participation, which can ultimately only improve the outcomes and experiences of the people our sector supports. It is important to recognise women’s achievements, so women are encouraged to continue developing and contributing to the transport sector and continue to change the landscape of the road sector.

Taking the opportunity to celebrate women's accomplishments and gaining recognition for how they have contributed to the industry is an important way to make our industry more inclusive.

If you are interested in getting involved with the CIHT West Midlands Women's Network, volunteering with the regional committee, or have ideas about events or ED&I, please contact westmidlands@ciht.org.uk.