READI RUNWAY PILOT
INDUSTRY BUDDY VIDEO SERIES
Introducing our Industry Buddies
Careers in construction begin through joinery, cadetships, property economics and a law firm, not just a degree and a graduate role. Some start in retail or plant hire before finding their footing on site.
Those paths lead to national tenders, state-wide planning and major airport upgrades, proof that the industry has room for people who arrive sideways.
Standout Career Project
Some careers are shaped by one project: a $730 million beachfront development, or a live army barracks with over 200 buildings, delivered across four years and two hundred buildings.
What those projects teach is rarely on the drawings. It's how to prioritise when ten things are due by close of business, how to lean on a team through daily problems, and how to keep showing up with the same passion on day one thousand as day one.
Biggest Challenge When Starting Out
Feeling like site is a foreign language. Challenging colleagues with 20 years of experience when you're 19. These are the moments that test people early in construction: not knowing the terminology, not knowing what to prepare for a meeting, not trusting your own call.
Building past them takes shadowing the right people, asking questions without apology, and picking up confidence one conversation at a time.
Advice For Women In Male Dominated Industries
Being the only woman in the room. A performance review that assumed she'd have children. Bias like this still shapes careers in construction, even as the industry shifts toward more women in senior leadership and more men stepping up as genuine mentors.
Backing yourself, taking up space, and staying yourself rather than assimilating are what carry people through it.
Important Skills In CM & QS
Communication that goes beyond conversation. Showing up with the right attitude before you've even walked in the room.
Careers in construction are built on communicating clearly, documenting decisions, managing relationships up and sideways, and bringing genuine passion to work that often asks for eight, ten, twelve hours a day.
The Digital Tools & Technology In The Industry
Supervisors on site now carry iPads doing work nobody imagined ten years ago. Manual planning on paper is giving way to software, and construction is only just catching up on AI while other industries are years ahead.
Getting ahead of that shift starts earlier than most people think.
Future Trends That Will Shape The Industry
Green Star ratings and carbon tracking are starting to outweigh cost. Robots are already building highways with no one on site. Culture is shifting too, with flexible working, job-sharing and shorter weeks arriving in an industry that swore they never would.
What's coming next will ask people to keep adapting, faster than ever before.
Balancing Family Planning & Career
For women in construction, building a career and planning a family can come with unique challenges. The industry has traditionally been structured around site-based roles and long hours, but there are many pathways within construction.
Creating more flexibility and supporting different career paths can help make the industry more accessible for women at every stage of their careers.
Why we
Beca
Trellis Collective acknowledges and pays respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
