‘A lot more construction companies are now moving out of the Dark Ages’
Hollie Cregan, equality and diversity chief at construction giant Graham Group, talks to Margaret Canning about the FIR agenda
SHE embodies the old saying ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’. Hollie Cregan, the head of equality, diversity and FIR (fairness, inclusion and respect) at construction giant Graham Group, has created many of her biggest career opportunities for herself.
And Hollie has used that cando attitude to inspire other women into construction, taking part in the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) NI Women in Construction Summit earlier this month.
While we know it as a Northern Irish business, Graham Group in Hillsborough is now a giant in the sector around the UK, with turnover of over £1bn in its latest accounts and with a workforce of around 2,200 people on projects all over.
High-profile projects delivered by the firm include Buchanan Wharf in Glasgow, student housing for the University of York, a school of public health at Imperial College London ’s new School of Public Health and a national modernisation programme for Marks & Spencer.
At home, it’s working on the Loft Lines development of nearly 800 new homes at Titanic Quarter.
And last year, it reported a record pipeline of £2bn across building, civil engineering, interior fit-out, facilities management and development management.
Its high profile and Uk-wide workload has meant Graham Group has embraced Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) to ensure everyone feels included at the organisation, hiring Hollie to lead on the matter in 2021.
Speaking to me last week, she says the company is selective about which aspects of EDI it will mark in the company through specific events.
“We’re celebrating Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which aims to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about neurodevelopmental disorders. We’ve just had an external person doing a webinar on autism for us.
“One of the stats from the person in Autism NI is that neurodevelopmental conditions affect around one in 54 people.
“If we’ve just over 2,000 employees, chances are there will be many with such conditions,” she says.
“Some people on our workforce will have shared that with us, or don’t even know themselves or haven’t had a formal diagnosis. It’s really interesting.
“What we’re trying to do is raising awareness of what we can do around recruitment, attracting and supporting people who already work for us.”
Hollie, who is from outside York and lives in Leeds, admits construction firms sometimes live up to the cliche of being old-fashioned and male-dominated.
“Unfortunately, yes, some do deserve that stereotype.
“Certainly, on the male-dominated point, at Graham we’re doing some amazing stuff but we’re still around the 80:20 split, male to female.
“You can’t deny we are still a male-dominated sector.
“The point about being old-fashioned... I think we’re getting there and there are a lot more construction companies doing a lot, whether around encouraging people with a disability into the workforce, or considering ethnicity of their workforce.
“There’s a lot more construction companies bringing themselves out of the Dark Ages and really moving to that maturity level.”
She has worked in construction and infrastructure for around 20 years, starting out at a railway company in an administration role.
“I was booking labour for the weekend and doing a wide range of admin responsibilities, and was doing quite well and got promoted up those admin levels. Then one of the commercial directors said to me, ‘what about being a trainee quantity surveyor?’. I said, ‘that sounds brilliant’ but I didn’t know what being a quantity surveyor meant,” she adds.
After working as a quantity surveyor for a time, she was drawn to project management while working for German company Volkerrail in England.
“I thought, ‘I could probably do that’ but that I would start as an assistant project manager. But there weren’t any in the company at the time, but I knew that our client Network Rail did have some.
“So I told my own employer, and they said ‘we’ll advertise for an assistant project manager role’.
“So I applied, and was successful, then managed my own projects, delivered a few well and was promoted to project manager,” Hollie adds.
“It was not so much about not taking no for an answer, but it was more about seeing opportunities and asking for them and creating them, rather than thinking ‘that’s something I can’t do’ or ‘I can’t see anyone else like me doing that’.”
As the company’s only female project manager, she frequently talked to schools about how great it was to work in rail.
“I was rocking up in full orange PPE,” she reminisces. Hollie felt enthusiastic about communicating about her work, and joined external support networks like Women in Rail and Women in Project Management.
She said those networks made her more aware of equality of opportunity could go beyond gender.
“I did a bit more research around equality, diversity and inclusion, that’s when I approached our business and said ‘I want a change and I want to lead on EDI’. The MD was like, ‘what’s that?’”.
The MD went off and spoke to his board, returning to Hollie with the offer of a job as head of EDI not for Volkerrail, but the whole group company Volkerwessels. After a 12-month secondment, her role was made permanent.
She spent four years in the role before joining Graham Group while Covid-19 restrictions were in place.
She says companies must make sure EDI values are embedded and recognise that they go far beyond gender.
“It is much broader now this week to the point that we’re celebrating Neurodiversity Celebration Week. We wouldn’t have even been talking about neurodiversity three years ago.
“It’s really easy to put in lip service about EDI and just have a figurehead. But at Graham, we make sure it is embedded.
“Our CEO and our MDS sit on our FIR steering group so it’s really led by the top. They’ve been on inclusive leadership training, ally-ship training, they’re seen to be leading from the top, because they’re involved.”
She says there are a multitude of EDI issues which the company can cover but that they have selected some to mark with events.
“We’ll acknowledge Pride in June. Later in the year, we’ll do something around age and disability,” Hollie explains.
“Last year, we marked Black History Month in October but we try and do something slightly different every year.
“This year, we’re recognising Easter and the meaning around it through a blog and podcast around what people believe, and their faith.
“We’ll mark International Women’s Day, Men’s Day…it depends on what the priority is year on year and what our people are asking for.”
‘It was not so much about not taking no for an answer, but more about seeing opportunities and asking for them and creating them’