Diversity leader hoping to do herself out of a job

Margaret Devlin wants the Women's Infrastructure Network to be positive and active.

The chairperson of a fast-growing diversity champion for women in the infrastructure sector says she only agreed to head up its advisory board if it worked itself out of a job quickly.

Margaret Devlin, a director of infrastructure companies and organisations around the country, said her second proviso was "that it wasn't a stitch and bitch group".

"I didn't want it to be a group sitting around talking about their woes. They can still do that but it has to be much more positive and active."

Formed just over a year ago, the Women's Infrastructure Network is a subset of Infrastructure NZ and today has 650 members with chapters in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

A Northland chapter launches this month and there is strong interest from Hamilton and Dunedin, said Devlin, who chairs Auckland's Watercare and leading New Zealand engineering and design consultancy Harrison Grierson. She is also a director of Met Services, Waikato Regional Airport, Aurora Energy and on the councils of Waikato University and Wintec.

The network, which aims to make diversity a non-issue by 2021, tries not to be too gender specific, said Devlin. But when resources are an issue, it's not sensible to ignore 50 per cent of the population, she said.

All classes of the infrastructure sector were represented within the network.

"Infrastructure is not just engineers. It's all the professional services that support the sector - including lawyers, accountants, financiers."

Men were welcome to join chapters and were involved at a raft of events held last year. Events and panel discussions have been attracting more than 100 people, Devlin said.

With momentum well-established, the job for the advisory board and members this year was to widen the circle of influence within NZ Inc. And to find more sponsors to support foundation supporters City Care and Hamilton-based infrastructure services consultancy Beca.

Devlin said the group was not interested in duplicating the work of others.

"In part our role is that of a super-connector. To keep the conversation going. It's not so much that people don't want diversity, it's that they don't know what to do to achieve it. It's not about positive discussion about diversity. It's about recognising you have a workforce and you have options.

"While our focus is on gender, a lot of our work will be about diversity in its wider form It's about promoting champions of change. Diversity isn't just about gender. There have been so many studies which show the value diversity brings but achieving it is an issue.

"Pale, male and stale [situation] is changing but there is still a huge resource that needs to be mined."