Times are a-changing in 'old boys' club'

Lara Poloni (left) has been with AECOM for 21 years.

A focus on gender diversity and equality makes good business sense, says AECOM boss Lara Poloni.

Infrastructure has long been something of an old boys' club - but Lara Poloni, chief executive of AECOM Australia and New Zealand - says that times are changing.

"Gender diversity and equality makes good business sense, and that is the way we want to do business at AECOM," Poloni said.

With more than two decades of experience with AECOM, Poloni said she had seen transformational change within the industry over the course of her career.

"It was a bit of a shock coming to a traditional engineering organisation like AECOM 21 years ago.

"There were no women in leadership roles, the only women I would see around me were a handful of young engineers, the HR manager and the tea lady."

Under the leadership of Poloni, AECOM has identified a number of focus areas for gender diversity within the business.

Alongside improvements to workplace flexibility and career development within the business, there is a deliberate push to reach gender targets for external hires and within management positions.

"When there is a replacement hiring that needs to occur, we challenge our managers to find a strong balance of talent," Poloni said.

AECOM has committed itself to filling 15 per cent of roles at the associate director level and above with women by the end of 2016, with that target increasing to 20 per cent by the end of 2020.

"We are quite deliberately going out to market for new roles, saying we want women first in some of those roles. That means we need to be quite strategic in terms of the time it takes to make sure we are tapping into the best women that are out there," Poloni added.

"Our hiring and promotion principles are still the same - merit first."

Sarah Sinclair, chief engineer at Auckland Council, said a lack of information surrounding infrastructure jobs remained a major barrier to female participations.

"Not knowing what careers are available and what skills you need to go into them is a major barrier," Sinclair said.

"Infrastructure has a huge number of careers for practical people.

"If you are good at organising things, for example, being a project manager on a site or in an infrastructure office is a great careerthat a young woman might not think of."

Sarah Lang, head of social infrastructure at NZCID, said that as more women pursued careers in infrastructure, the sector was being forced to reinvent itself.

Lang reported seeing an increase in women joining the sector through roles in complementary and related disciplines.

"More women are becoming involved in infrastructure today through associated fields, such as law, planning, architecture and project management," she said.

"Time are indeed a-changing in this old boys' club."