National housebuilder Bellway is celebrating International Women’s Day (Friday 8 March) and Women in Construction Week (from Monday 4 March) by turning a spotlight on the women in senior roles within the business.
The company’s West Midlands division is leading the way, with three women – Maddie Dale, Sophie Crockford and Caitlin Blair – working on site management teams at housing developments across the region.
The site management trio are being mentored by Marie Richards, Sales Director at Bellway West Midlands. Meanwhile, Rachel Marner, Angela Nurse, Teresa Bronson-Blackham and Lisa Morris occupy sales manager roles within the division.
Maddie Dale is currently acting site manager at Bellway’s Rolleston Manor development in Rolleston on Dove. She is set to take over as site manager at Chellaston Fold in Chellaston, which is being built under Bellway’s Ashberry Homes brand, when work starts there in the coming weeks.
The 35-year-old from Lichfield said: “Despite having no real construction background, I took the plunge and joined a housebuilding company as an assistant site manager and loved it. When the opportunity came up to apply for a job at Bellway – a big national developer – I jumped at the chance.
“Not for a moment have I regretted my decision to change career as I love what I do now and I am working for a great company. Bellway have supported me from day one, have encouraged me to back myself and given me the opportunities to progress my career which I think I have made the most of.”
Sophie Crockford, who lives in Stafford and is just 20, is assistant site manager at Bellway’s Victoria Gate development in Stafford. She said: “I was made assistant site manager in the summer of 2022 after getting my NVQ level 4 in site management. It was a lovely feeling and came just weeks after I had managed to buy my own three-bedroom semi-detached house in Stafford.
“While my friends were at university, I was earning and learning and had saved enough money for a deposit on a house. It just shows that you don’t have to study for a degree and saddle yourself with debt because you can sign up as an apprentice and get on with life.”
Caitlin Blair, who joined Bellway as a construction administrator in 2021, is now a trainee assistant site manager at Harvino in Hunnington, Worcestershire. The 22-year-old from Nuneaton said: “Bellway have been brilliant to work for right from the outset. They have allowed me to change disciplines and have supported me as I made the transition. I am the only female in the construction team here and am proud to be so.
“If any young women are put off thinking about a career in the building industry I would tell them to think again. More and more women are taking on leading roles in construction and I am excited to be part of that future.”
Women in Construction Week is a national campaign to encourage more women to make a career in the building industry. Bellway has set itself a target to improve the gender diversity of its directly employed workforce to a 60/40 male/female split by July 2025. Last year this split was 69/31.
In January 2023, in collaboration with the Home Builders Federation, the not-for-profit organisation Women into Construction and eight other housebuilders, the Women into Housebuilding Programme was launched to attract more female recruits into trainee assistant site manager roles.
Marie Richards said: “At Bellway West Midlands, we promote people based on their ability and talent and it is great to see that an increasing number of women are taking up senior roles and management positions on our site teams. International Women’s Day is an important marker and a reminder that we should do everything we can to improve working environments for women. By highlighting the careers of people like Maddie, Sophie and Caitlin we are illustrating that women are filling roles which had been traditionally associated with men.”
For more information about careers at Bellway, visit https://www.bellwaycareers.co.uk.