Suzanne is a Professor of Construction Management at the School for Built Environment, Massey University, and Associate Dean (Research) at, the College of Sciences, Massey University. She has a PhD in Construction Management, and a BEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering, both from Oxford Brookes University, and a Graduate Diploma in Business Studies (Dispute Resolution) from Massey University.
Suzanne’s research focuses on resilience, disaster management, construction innovation, and smart cities. She is interested in how cities, communities, and organizations plan for disasters and manage hazard events and has a particular interest in how cities, communities, and organisations rebuild and recover. Suzanne has been an advisor to organizations on resilience building and disaster recovery, most recently including Auckland Council, Government Agencies in New Zealand, and Hunter Water in Australia. Suzanne has been Principal Investigator and Research Leader on many projects, including a recent 5 year, $10 million NZD project, where she is program lead, on building capacity and capability for the construction sector and a recently completed $4 million NZD Principal Investigator for the Urban theme in the National Science Challenge: Resilience to Nature’s Challenges. She has published over 300 research papers and co-written 3 books, the most recent co-authored book being Resilient Post Disaster Recovery Through Building Back Better (Routledge in 2019), with colleagues Sandeeka Mannakkara and Regan Potangaroa. Suzanne is a keen PhD supervisor and has now supervised to completion of 40 PhD students.
Uh for this uh seminar series is distinguished women researchers in the built environment and indeed today we have one of a distinguished member of this community uh Professor suzan Wilkinson so let me introduce give a brief introduction to her uh achievements thus far uh Professor Wilkinson is uh a professor of
Construction management in the school for built environment at Massi University and she’s also associate Dean for research for college of science at at Massie uh she has a PHD in construction management and a bachelor’s honors in civil engineering both from Oxford Brooks University and a graduate diploma in business studies in dispute
Resolution uh from Mass University uh suzan’s research focuses on resilience disaster management construction Innovation and smart cities she is interested in how cities communities and organizations plan for disasters and manage hazard uh events and has a particular interest in how cities communities and organizations rebuild and recover Prof Wilkinson has been
Advisor to organizations on resilience building and Disaster Recovery most recently including ockland Council government agencies in New Zealand and Hunter waterer in Australia suzan has been principal investigator and research leader on many projects including a recent five-year 10 million 10 million New Zealand doar project which where she is the program
Lead on building capacity and capability for construction sector and a recently completed $4 million principal investigator for the urban theme in the National Science challenge uh resilience to Nature’s challenges she has published over 300 research papers and co-written three books and most recently co-authored book uh being resilient post- Disaster Recovery through building
Back better that’s published by rage in 2019 uh she wrote this book with colleagues cika manakara and rean poang pangara sorry Reagan I apologize for that uh suzan is Keen PhD supervisor and has now supervised to completion over 40 PhD students so with that said please welcome prcess Suzanne wi suzan over to
You thank you Mark um just check you can see my screen the just the title of the yes we can on the screen yeah okay then so hello everybody and um thank you very much Mark and Cole for inviting me to this um prestigious seminar series um
Thrilled to be here uh it’s actually 5:30 in the morning in New Zealand so um got up especially early to talk to you and hopefully um you’ll hear a little bit about my career so what do what am I going to talk about I think I’m going to
Talk about the highs and lows of a career in uh construction management what would I do differently if I was starting up again so there might be people in the audience thinking about an academic career or a business career or where to go next I think Al I’m also
Going to talk about what what I see as important research so I’ll talk about the research that I do and the work the work that um I can consider particularly important and then I’m going to touch on what I what I’ve experienced as a woman professor in construction or a woman in
Construction throughout my academic career and they it’s mixed up so you’ll see different slides have different a different flavor so um as we go through you’ll see different things little bit about me um I’m not a New Zealander I don’t have a New Zealand accent I actually have a London accent I’m from
London and was brought up in London until I went University and I think like a typical child female child trying to decide what to do I had a kind a lot of choices and I think those choices came down to history of engineering I was really good
At history but I was lucky enough to have a physics teacher who said I think engineering is going to be good for you I don’t think I was really well informed at the time and I did love history and I kept so I kept up history I stayed
Right till the end of my six form study in history to keep my options open but civil engineering one out and I think I wasn’t particularly well informed and I think this is very common I chose civil engineering for these three things primarily number three it would lead to a job and I
Didn’t quite know what history would lead to other than a history teacher I I really like skyscrapers and tall building so I thought I would build skyscrapers so I wanted to build things and I thought hey I could build skyscrapers actually there weren’t that many skyscraper buildings going on in
And around Britain at the time that subsequently came in the 90s after I’d left UK when they massively built up uh the London in particular into skyscrapers so I kind of missed my opportunity there but I thought also I like to be outside so I like to work
Outside I wasn’t well informed about civil engineering at all I had no idea really I didn’t know the the whole breadth of civil engineering and I’m not sure you need I needed to know that but I think I wasn’t I wasn’t well informed and at the time there was limited
Internet so you’re talking about a time when there was no unlimited internet so what you you had to find out things by going to this weird thing called the library what was it like being a woman in construction and Engineering in the late 80s and early 90s I think I could
Kind of boil it down to these three things there was under representation there was I was in a class of three women and we were had about 60 men in the class so that was the kind of ratio when I was doing civil engineering um the opportunities and access I think
Were the main barrier at the time I was lucky I had a physics teacher who said you know engineering would be really good for you I there were other women in my class who had a father who said it was really good for you or were they were following in the the their
Footsteps of somebody who had given them some access into into engineering and that Still Remains quite a common access route for women going into construction and Engineering but I think we’ve broadened our views much more and then there were there just was no women around really in in engineering and
Construction very few no Role Models I didn’t have any women lecturers um there were some women in Psychology and the Arts faculty but there were just no there was just no role models that you could kind of go well what’s the career going to be so
You kind of a little bit on your own but um you know you make friends any anyway irrespective of of male female any um gender you just make friends with people and and we were a really good cohort in that year um my degree had a had 18 months
Out so I went into industry and I went onto onto a construction site just a little bit about construction sites at the time the one you’ll see is not a 1980s construction site however that does represent a 1980s construction site so I it’s fairly recent one but it does
Look quite similar so we had one computer and nobody knew how to use it so just basically sat in the corner we handw wrote everything we handw wrote reports we handw wrote notes on site we would we would file those we would um give them to a receptionist and they
Would F they would type out the important ones there were no mobile phones so imagine that you’re on site and something happens you know have to run to get the kit you can’t you know you can’t assemble people very quickly cameras were cameras so we took a lot of
Photos so we had to take photos of connections but there was no tagging those two parts of the building through a Bim model or anything like that basically you just took photos they then got processed you then wrote on those photos what they were very much the beginnings of email
Internet but not on this site because we we only had one computer that nobody used somebody said they used it and some used to spend a bit of time on it but I have no idea what they were doing because I don’t think it was really connected and at the time Architects
Were really important so we had I was on a site where the architect’s coming and I think that’s quite a shift now and the architect would come along and would be doing things like checking all our documentation walking around site but it was we cleaned up the site we got
Prepared for the architect’s visit they never visited just as an architect you know never just showed up there was always you know this big intake of breath from The Architects visiting and we would get like ready for this royal visit so um even so I felt that you know
Probably I should have gone into architecture because they were getting all the all the praise um Machinery was much the same at the time so you’ll see this site you know with cranes and diggers and trucks much the same delivery system um supply chain type activity without the digital overlay so
I think there was fairly similar in the ways of construction um the we weren’t doing modern methods of construction which I think has moved on but essentially we were we were building as we would build now and the thing thing about being female and a malale dominated world I
Think was it was quite confronting that the only female on site the only female had ever been on site that a lot of people had seen and just just lowlevel confronting Behavior around what are you doing here is this the right place for you not quite sure you could you know you’re given
Instructions but they weren’t quite sure they could take instructions from you these this is kind of low level but the higher level stuff was really around the office had total nude calendars of women so that was a bit bit a bit shocking which I did ask as a you know I asked
For them to be removed and they didn’t get removed and so um so basically what happened subsequently was I got them removed through head office and that was that was an unpopular move for me on the construction site those sorts of things I think were kind of more of the higher
Level things which you wouldn’t see now but the lower level stuff I think still there still an under tone of what are you doing here what makes the difference is actually having a critical mess on the site so if you have two or three or four women on the site they’re much
Better than having one woman on the site and I still think that probably true so I completed my PhD in in the early 90s and I I kind of thought how what am I going to do next and the the the industry was quite buyant at the
Time so I thought well and I was being offered a PhD scholarship and I was being offered a PhD at the same institution I was quite happy to do that and but I wasn’t quite sure so this is how I made a decision I loved being a
Student so there’s a positive there I thought the lifestyle was great I could do what I wanted it was sold to me as go away and explore I think you’ll enjoy this and got three years of being a student again you can explore what you
Like and I really like that so I like the student lifestyle I liked being a student but I think the the number one thing was my partner was doing a PhD and that meant that we collectively as a couple could still live the lifestyle we
Had been living as students so we met as students and we’re still together so that that was probably a good choice but I think I missed other things I think when I was weighing it up because I was very very close decision for me as whether to
Kind of go into a consultancy company I really like geotechnical engineering and I thought well there’s an alternative choice but I think doing the degree it was quite a high choice for me doing a PhD was quite a hard choice for me but I think in the end the lifestyle side of
That and another another kind of three years of doing what I wanted to do really kind of one out there so just thinking about what I’d do differently so I think during my PhD I would make more connections with with industry I think that’s one of the big
Things that makes a difference because it still leaves your options open as a PhD student so I think I didn’t make many connections when I was doing my PhD and I and I think that that would have given me a but much wider focus on on the industry and a much bigger
Understanding of what the industry was all about and the second thing I continued into my PhD from my undergraduate degree and basically um went straight to the same University and I think I probably would choose a different University and I’ll come back to why I choose a different University a
Bit later but look at look at what the highs were I mean it was great fun I loved it I really love doing a PhD you know great colleagues I was in a room of six or seven other PhD students and we were all doing different things and we
All we just had a lot of fun stilling contact with some of those colleagues not all of them um that Discovery and freedom was fantastic I loved it I loved being out in the library and reading and finding out things and just basically nosing around the place which was great
I did some lecturing at the time which I also started to do um which gave me some experience the lifestyle proved to be really good but one of the highs that came through during my PhD was the conferences I started going to conferences quite early on and I think
That made such a difference to what I knew about the research industry and what I knew about being an academic the lows sometimes you got no money everyone who’s done a PhD would know about that that’s so can be a considerable low um the Envy of others I think for me it was
All my colleagues who had done P civil engineering degrees some of them were doing some really cool stuff they were working around the world they working in other places they were just generally doing some really cool buildings and I kind of missed that because I kind of thought oh you know
Maybe I should have done a couple of years doing the you know the great OE working in Indonesia or Hong Kong or France where these people were a lot of them were in the UK but many of them headed overseas so there was an alternative lifestyle that I could
Imagine at the time that I wasn’t having however I was still having a great time doing a PhD but I think one of the big loads which you you’d understand as PhD students if you do a PhD or doing a research degree is around the confusion
The hard slog the will I ever finish so that always I think is embedded in the whole process of a PhD because it just takes time and you think three years is quite a long time and a lot of them go beyond three years
This is what my PhD was in so it kind of like it actually was in women women in civil engineering there was nothing to do with disaster management at all um I did a a PhD which looked at choices made by women civil engineers leaving higher education and at the time there were
362 women civil engineers in the whole country leaving education that that year so um I leared a lot of things around employment law I learned loads of social science methodologies around case studies and questionnaires statistics I had six months in the in the US while I
Was doing my PhD which was great I looked at International comparison did did a lot lot around diversity and inclusion and looked at different just looked at the whole structure of the industry and how it was working and who did what and where they went and why
They CH to do what they were what they wanted to do so it was great for kind of really understanding how the industry works and how human resources in the industry worked but I think I mostly learned about the process of research because I was in a shared office and
They were doing geotechnical structures computer science I think I mostly learned from my peers about this you know what are they doing how are they doing it you know having fun understanding those sorts of things and I and I had three three supervisors so I had a psychology supervisor a supervisor
In architecture and a supervisor in civil engineering and that gave me a really broad kind of canvas to work with and they didn’t agree at all amongst themselves so it was kind of quite a confusing time but that was good because it meant I took courses in Psychology I
Took courses in structures and architecture and um and I could and I could I did some lecturing in basic construction management at the time so it was a really good time for me and I really enjoyed and really appreciated being at oxa Brooks and oxa Brooks at
The time were really gearing up their research so they were really putting energy into their PHT students so we were being sent to conferences and basically given like a really good education I felt I came out with a really good education but I think the thing reason why I might have changed universities
Was because of this the construction man management research in the 1990s in UK was basically dominated by three institutions mainly I mean there were scatterings elsewhere but you you even needed to be R reading sulfur and lfra and I noticed that if you were in those organization in those universities you
Would probably get jobs because the interchange of people between those it was quite a big it was quite an obvious move people would move between these institutions or the PhD students would get jobs in one or other of those institutions and it was pretty much led
By a very small number of academics and this is a list of academics and I in the red I went and chased them down because having left the UK a long time ago I didn’t really kind of keep in touch with all of them um I did did with some of
Them but you’ll see they really still still seem to have stayed in lbr and wedding certainly the people that I knew knew well and um Martin skitmore in particular was at Salford but moved across to quut and lived and still is now at Bond uh but my supervisor one of
My supervisors just encouraged me to go to these leading institutions so occasionally I’d go to their seminars very close to reading and Will Hughes in particular was just extremely H extremely helpful with new PhD students um and there’s lots of others I can’t remember everybody but these were
People that I kind of reme was trying to remember at the time who were helpful or who were giving advice to Young PhD students I thought that was really really excellent a very nice um group of people so if you know about arcom this is what arcom looked like in the 1990s
So if you ever go to arcom now it’s a slick well organized big conference limits the number of papers that that it takes um but basically everyone wants to go to arcom uh it’s now big International Conference um but in the 1990s it was a small bunch of people and
You’ll see in this photo I managed to track this photo down from from an arcom newsletter of 1994 now there’s only one woman in this photo but I was actually at this conference but that woman there with the red circle is not me I think it’s Helen
Lingard but I was at this conference and I think we were the only two at the conference I certainly don’t recall anymore however the conference wasn’t huge this is this was the conference and you’ll see Martin skitmore number two on the on the right but I can’t quite put
Names to everybody it’s a bit blurred there so I went to the island man conference the eth annual arom conference and then I went to the Oxford one which is where this conference picture was taken and I can’t kind of stress the value of conferences in your
Early stages is as a researcher you don’t really you don’t really know much and so you go to these conferences and you’re a bit overwhelmed by the everything going on but you really pick up some great ideas and some great tips and see what’s current and all those
Kinds of great things that makes you more of a rounded researcher a time traveling so at the end of ’90s the end of my PhD in ’94 we decided we didn’t want to be in Oxford anymore we could have been in Oxford for the rest of our lives because
Both of us were being offered jobs but we wanted to go traveling and I think that was kind of common thing in the for people in their late 20s in fact I’ve got three children and they’ve all gone traveling so postco buildup of need to travel I understand that because I did
That in the in 1994 and it was supposed to be a short trip supposed to be go to New Zealand for 3 years let’s have a look around New Zealand in Australia then they just come back to the UK and we’ll kind of I think we would restart
Our lives in the UK so you know we’ could probably go back somewhere in and around Oxford and we’d you know maybe I could get a job at reading maybe I could get a job kind of locally around there maybe London but it certainly was supposed to be a short
Trip but I ended up first of all here which is car what was called Carrington poly Technic but it’s now unitech for two years as a researcher and then an opening came here which is the University of ockland and I just stayed there I just thought this is a
Cool place to me really enjoyed my time at the University of Oakland and I just stayed there for years and years and years and didn’t leave there’s another reason why I didn’t leave which I come up come up to and then more recently 2019 I moved to Messi to a because it
Was a brand new school being built and a brand new school lots of energy new lots of new young people coming in so I thought there’s an opportunity to help build a new school so I’ve which I’ve really enjoyed I think after being so long at the University of Oakland I knew where
All the bugs were I actually could I actually could go to work with my slippers on that’s what it felt like it felt like I really knew my job so well that there wasn’t anything new that was challenging me I’ve moved to Massi I’ve been yeah definitely found that I’ve had more
Challenges in the last few years than I had probably in quite a number of years previously um what else can I say going back to research so First Independent research was in 1994 so just finished my PhD and unitech were not interested in women engineering at all so the message
Was we’ quite like you to be a researcher here we’ll give you a position unitech were trying to become a university so they needed to have a lot of PhD people there so they hired in a whole load of people with phds didn’t quite know what to do with us and so
They just said well we’ll just give you lots of projects so my project was procurement and life cycle costing in New Zealand and so you you can see I suddenly switched because that’s what I was you know being asked to do so I think if I’d thought about it at the
Time time I would have carried on publishing in with in my published my PhD more widely and the reason was I think I left a lot of my PhD didn’t it just didn’t get published it got published in conferences it didn’t get the wider audience and it and the
Subject area became really more and more popular as I moved away from it and so I only really published one paper and then went intellect in and was working more mainstream construction management and I think I’d also get more training oh looks like we have lost profor
Wilkinson uh I think she would join in well let’s give a few minutes oh there you are be suzan you’re on mute sorry my internet just went off completely so I’m not sure really what happened there I can restart my where I was yeah absolutely yeah no no worries
Just went black my my screen just went blank and I was like all know what’s happened here so can everyone see that not yet no okay um back on the zoom and Sh screen the screen to share apologies about this have a look what’s happened
Here so am I back on now uh yeah it’s coming up uh no am I back on uh I think so yeah I can see your screen okay sorry about that my screen just went black and I was just like oh that’s that’s really um that’s really hard so
Right I’m coming back so where I was I’m I show you start from where I was yeah you you’re happy for me to kick off again so um so just talking about the First Independent research and it was in in a place called unitech and at the
Time they were trying to be a university and I was asked to do some lecturing there and I was just thrown into construction contracts and project management in first year classes and I really found that absolutely terrifying so I think the other thing I really encouraged people to do would be to get
Some more training or get training to make sure that you really do know how to go into how to lecture how to do these kinds of things I think just know the fundamentals of your discipline so obviously this is not all the fundamentals of the discipline but just
Know the basics of what’s going on in your discip in the in the wider construction management discipline because even though you might be teaching a niche area you still need to have that overview of how do your things connect to what’s going on spend some time talking to to construction
Employers construction managers people on site to really get a sense of how you’re your discipline connects I think there’s much more activity now than there was at the time around doing that doing work with industry and working and understanding more broadly in terms of the barriers for women I think they still remained
Certainly in the in the 1990s they were getting better and I think we were beginning to see more women going into engineering more of a drive more of more of a drive of women going into construction access and encouragement I think the schools were starting to do a
Bit more and certainly around this time I did a lot of work with schools so I would go into schools talk about construction talk about civil engineering I think there was some discrimination in the workplace you’d quite often see um reports around unequal pay lack of support mobility
Within the sector and also I think we still lacked Role Models so there’s still very few I was the first woman a civil engineer to be employed at the University of ockland in their civil engineering department we had a few more come after me still not great numbers so
I think there was still this lack of where where is all the people that I can get some advice from and things were starting to get better and I think they gradually got better because we got more aware that we needed to do something and so we did a lot
Certainly at the University a lot to promote engineering more broadly and civil engineering um particularly so we did have teams that would work with schools and work with junior staff to improve the role of women there were lots of initiatives going on at the time around stem there
Was also beginning to see some networks so this is the first time uh nck which is the National Association of women in construction it was just starting to be convened in New Zealand and so the professional development opportunities and networks that were just starting up there were still few women in leadership
Roles and so few staff none of them were in leadership positions and I think a lot of women academics were getting themselves into service roles and I think that was one of the things that happen quite frequently less so now but certainly at the time I saw other women
In other faculties they they were doing a lot of the service roles and weren’t really talking about their research so I think there was quite a divide at the time but it gradually got better as we kind of sh sha a light on the things that were happening
Around you know lead ERS ship promotion um I think the universities took took quite a lead in that so for me 97 to 2002 I think it was all about learning the subject so I did some work on life cycle costing did some work on looking at architecture and engineering
Education and the the lecturing got better and better as you get more and more used to it and I wrote a textbook but really for my own benefit which was really my notes but it seemed that lots of other people wanted copies of my notes so colleague and I turned it into
A textbook so we had a wrote a textbook in this textbook in 2003 it was repeated in 2010 so this is the front cover of the second edition and we’re just coming out with a third edition so there’s obviously still a need for a basic textbook for people who
Can just go and go oh that’s what it’s about so and this is written very much with that with me in mind what did I want to know at the time of what didn’t I know and going out and researching that so my colleague and I roseby who
Was in architecture we we teamed up and we still we’ve just finished our third edition so I’ve got to give a shout out to CIB since this is a CIB organiz organized um conference organized seminar uh the the good thing about CIB is this International Focus remember I
Said about arcom it was very much a UK based organization we had a similar one we have a similar one here called Oria which is really kind of regional construction management and education but CIB for me opens a completely different world so I’ve attended these five CIB conferences but
I’ve had papers in many other conferences and events so the sideline events that if they’ve been Regional then I’ve tended to go to them and yes I’m hoping to come to the 20 25 perd one so um got my ideas for papers and things and on the scientific committee so thank
You very much Mark for inviting me um but I you know shout out for CIB for me as a young member so I’ve been part of an Institutional membership since 1994 and that was unitech so unitech were really Forward Thinking in terms of their connections they had a good person
There who was really outward looking really want wanted to make unitech a great Institution for construction management and so CIB was one of those vehicles that it joined and made us all join and participate in so what does it give you it gives you those International networks colleagues
Internationally I still work with people I’ve met at the first CIB conference a quick what’s what who’s who who’s doing what and all those big topics and big picture thinkers that what the website G you access to all these people and more recently we did a tour of the UK with
Our research project and we looked on CB to see okay who’s where right well we want to go to leads you we want to go to leads Becky okay we’ll contact Muhammad there we want to go we want to go to wver Hampton okay we’ll contact them
Person there in wver Hampton we wanted to go to uh London so who’s who’s in CIB and who’s been in CIB and where where are they and what are they doing so this is a great way for a quick hit on what’s going on in your area and you
Just get so many curious people working so that’s kind of a great place to to look at these these you know who’s doing what and and work with those really curious people but I had complicated my life completely by 2001 CU I had three children by then and um that just
Totally and utterly comp Li Ates life but I wouldn’t have it any other way because they’re amazing as everybody every mother would say about their children um but it does mean a halt or a Slowdown or a rethink about your career so for me it was work life balance
Impossible with yet with toddlers to really accelerate your career uh hats off to anybody who can do it I barely kept alive let alone keep a career going Child Care at the time wasn’t great it was very very expensive luckily we could afford it because we
Had two incomes but would have no idea how you would do it if you didn’t have two incomes um career progression slowed I think it definitely slowed at the time because I couldn’t do I couldn’t do the travel and I couldn’t do the connections there’s a lot of things I didn’t want to
Do because I wanted to be home with the children it was a conscious choice and I think there wasn’t much support because people just didn’t understand that women wanted to work and have children and it’s not a and they didn’t necessarily want to take big breaks I did take six
Months off with each child and each time I felt that it was that was enough to if I took any more time off I would start losing currency within the organization but if I so I didn’t take more than six months off and I saw a reduction in Opportunities
So people didn’t really kind of ask me to do things you know especially around the research space satisfaction you know I really was on autopilot teaching I think you just got to recognize that you can only do as much as you can do and if you’ve been up all night with sick
Toddlers and you’ve got an 8:00 in the morning lecture you’re not going to be your best and there was a lot of juggling and for me it was colleagues who not in my own faculty because there were so few of us with children uh there were more in other
Faculty so I made friends with women in arts women in science women in uh um law women in health and they became my cohort because they all had children and they were their children were going to the crash so I learned I met them regularly and we talked about
How to survive and we we just created this cohort of of people who would support each other and that was absolutely fabulous so I kind of saw you know the world saw me like this so this is one of my meetings where I would go to and this
Is actually a trip I did do to Korea basically I felt like this most of the time just totally and utterly what on Earth is going on and completely frazzled so and that lasted I think for quite a while um and so for me it meant a conscious decision to focus on family
To make sure I had enough friends I had no family other than my immediate husband and children in New Zealand um so friends became very very important a good friend Friends Network and research so teaching I could do and I didn’t need to kind of I didn’t feel I needed to get
Teaching Awards and do fabulously at teaching I think I was just okay at it so I was happy to let that continue as it was but I wanted to keep my research career going and in 2003 and new opportunity came up now this was really interesting because it wasn’t something
I was going to do what happened here was I was in a lift and I knew that there was this big meeting going on about a big funding body and they wanted to look at disaster recovery and I was in a lift and somebody in the lift said you need
To come to this meeting and I said no it’s not for me I’m going home you know I’ve got other things to do no no you definitely need to come to this meeting because you’re the only person person with construction management experience and we need somebody who might be able
To do that in a disaster environment I mean oh yeah you know well that sounds quite interesting actually I’ll come along and that set me on a completely different path up to that point I’d been doing procurement contracts construction management more generally looking at the role of the
Industry and the changes in the industry and suddenly I was in a s in a leading part in a five-year multi-party multi-institution government funded project looking at construction industry the role of the construction industry and disaster recovery and so it was just fabulous it was just the most
Interesting research that I’ve that I got into and it was useful and it was people were listening to us there were interesting topics and there was a lot of security about around having a fiveyear funded project because it meant that other things you could kind of let
Go so I could buy out of my teaching for instance and also my youngest child was only two at the time so it gave me five years of security where no one was going to get rid of me because there was so much money coming in so I was kind of I
Kind of felt quite protected then a great a great time for me um and 2003 these since 20 2003 that’s really what I’ve been spending my time doing which is why there all those papers on the um Google Scholar all on this dis disaster recovery but all about construction and
How construction Works in a disaster environment so even though we’re looking at climate adaptation we’re looking at it with a view to looking at how does the how does infrastructure get in affected what does the building industry contribute to climate adaptation how do we build smart cities it’s all about the
Construction side for me about the industry and what does it do what does it do and how is it how is the industry affected by shocks and stresses which is really the more recent work that we’ve been looking at and so some of the common things we we’re doing here’s one
Looking at um collaboration and communication and and who who who does what and when’s When’s communication needed and and how does how are the structures s Ed set set up is one that we’re doing around some engineering maps and flood hazards and climate change impacts so some modeling these were two
Of my colleagues here wiy and Muhammad and here’s one that we’ve just been doing just finishing off with Ain a PhD around um vulnerability of of tourist who tsunamis so looking in particular at tsunami evacuation mouts looking at what types of structures need to be built in order to protect the
Population of napia from from a tsunami and what kinds of Warning Systems do they need do they need and how do they need to get what how do you build those and these are other kinds of things that we’ve been working on recently around some recent P papers
Mark mentioned our 2019 book but we’ve also been working on carbon emissions for buildings and Cyclone resistant housing in Fiji so a whole range of areas around climate disasters Disaster Recovery trying to make the world better and I think we’ve gradually seen a lot more improvements in women in
Engineering and construction so I don’t think we’re seen as odd or different anymore I think in the 80s we were I think the options are similar and encouragement and choices to go into engineering has definitely improved there’s there’s much more support within the workplace and more women in leadership positions more
Visible and I think that’s just has really made a difference to younger women coming through and and and other staff members coming through the the the the lecturing positions because they can see a whole variety of people that they wouldn’t have seen you know 20 years ago would have been very
Different I think there’s a value of diversity now that in all workplaces that wasn’t there before and flexibility in the workplace so there’s much more flexibility and acceptance around for instance having children and working some of the issues I still see are in particular women not supporting
Women I think there’s a a need for still a need for these kind kinds of groups to come together and to talk about issues that they may be that they may be facing maybe you know cultural groups coming together or D different diverse groups coming together and just talking about some of
These issues there’s still a big pay G pay Gap in New Zealand which drives me nuts um so it’s 10% different still for women in engineering and construction and there’s different expectations after having children so there’s an expectation that you will slow down but I don’t necessarily think
With that that is the case now I think that families operate in multiple ways and there’s a a lot more acceptance of how families are going to operate in different ways and with the flexible working it’s not you don’t need to have those different expectations I don’t
Think they I think they exist but they’re not they’re not real I think that the equivalence of of the work is is is obvious um the best part of my job is really now is supervising PhD students all these people of my pH students and some of them are professors
Now so Kil um James and tamy are all professors and some of them are heading really exciting projects uh Mustafa and Alice are both really excellent for for that they’re in Industry they’re basically industry leaders and as in my uh student down on the right hand side with my colleague
Mifer uh just amazing student seems to win every PR prize and every certificate and every Cup going so and she’s now heading some work for the for for our Regional Council and doing some really great stuff so that’s the best part of the job by far you know the fact that
I’ve created from a family of me and my partner and our three kids I have a huge family now and they’re all over the world and they’re all all around the place and that I that is such a pleasure and what’s important is how my work and
The work of the te affects and improves Society so we now do more public contributing to public debates I think getting into public debates and putting your work out there it comes with risks but it also comes with advantages and it’s it’s really good to see when
Someone reads your when a lay person reads your piece of work and comes back and says hey I’ve got something to tell you I want to connect or I want to have coffee and it just gives you a real kind of buzz that somebody is looking and
Listening and using your work so our work has got into policy we’ve done Consulting and then we do we put out these kind of 800 words through the conversation primarily or through our local building magazines and the worldwide career so the most one of the big Pleasures is is
The interactions that you have and these were these are just recent interactions that we’ve had with people either collaborating or uh inquiries about collaborating and that’s been amazing so I just plotted those I think this is the last six months and I thought I’ll plot
Them on to see where where and how we’re doing things with people and it it just it’s really good we’ve got a worldwide reach and I think academics can have that reach and it’s our lives are richer for it another big thing for me is how I
Support and Mentor other staff so I do a lot of mentoring now spend a lot of time talking to younger staff encouraging them working out where how to talking to them about their careers what are they wanting to do structuring helping them structure things out and that’s a real
Pleasure and the World Turns so I recently went back to this year to the UK found it didn’t do civil engineering but it does disaster management so I feel like well isn’t that will coincidence so I think that’s the end of my my talk mark thank you suzan that was that was
Wonderful uh you know walking with you through your journey of life in in Academia that was really really interesting thank you very much for that uh let me open it for questions I’m sure from our audience there must be uh wanting to ask questions so please uh
Open your mic and go ahead I cannot see everybody on my screen but uh uh you know if you have a question please go ahead well uh while people are thinking about questions to ask let me let me jump in with my my question so you know
You you you mentioned about uh the changes that have happened uh in in the past years and and what you have seen through your career and uh So based on your exper erence you know what would you suggest uh universities need to do or workplaces need to do to attract more
Uh women Talent uh in whether that be in Academia or or in Industry so part of the answer I think is around the entry into construction and Engineering I think the numbers are pretty good but what seems to be happening is as they get into a career
They starting to be lost in that career and they they leave they leave construction and engineering and I think the bigger the bigger thing is how do we keep keep them on a women in the on a track within construction what’s the what’s the attrition rate if there’s a problem
There how do we address it the second thing like for me was I went on the women in leadership program and that was really really useful so to actually do some proper thinking about career your career and how it might develop then those kinds of training programs are really
Useful and it’s about creating a culture that people want to belong to if if the workpl is UN is unwelcoming then why would you want to be there there’s other options so so it’s about creating a a kind of workplace that is welcome in and that has diversity
Great ARA you have a question please go ahead yes uh so uh thank you Professor Wilkinson that was a great presentation so as you mentioned you have been part of the disaster research for almost 20 years now so I am also graduating from puu with and my research also looked at
Disaster recovery and Disaster Response mitigation as well so I wanted to uh know about your opinion about where this particular uh field of research going in the future because you know all the different universities in different continents and as well as countries are looking at this problem so what’s your
Opinion on that thank you so a couple of things I think one is to keep your main keep your core so did you do you have a construction or engineering background yes yeah so I think so I think the strength the strength I see is to have a core
That you relate that core to other disciplines and you become much more broadly marketable as a as a person in terms of getting a career so if you can go into construction into into a construction or an engineering faculty if you want to be an engineer and if you sorry if you want
To be an academic that’s an option that’s that that’s a wide option for you because almost all of the universities are interested in climate disaster Disaster Response big world problems Global issues and they’re gradually morphing to being much more holistic in the way that they do engineering so there’s a core
Engineering that you can contribute to or Core Construction discipline that you can contribute to but you’re also part of the future thinking and I think that’s that there there’s a there’s positions that are coming up around that future around that multidisiplinary transdisciplinary work that you would be
Right at the front of and so to look for the look for those Forward Thinking universities that have that where they”re consciously developing Disaster Recovery climate um zero carbon work and I think a lot a lot of lot of them are doing that now great thank you ARA for that question do
You have any follow up on that or no I’m good thank you that was a great response thank you anybody else wants to go next well so just to just to follow up on what what ARA was talking about um you know he’s he’s doing work in the
Role of insurance uh companies in in uh disaster mitigation and disaster support so he has done some work related to that but you you mentioned earlier when you were talking about your research recent work about shocks and stresses uh to improve resilience of of communities or or how to identify shocks and stresses
That would influence resilience of communities uh could you expand on that I know we have discussed that bit but I think that’s a very fascinating piece of work that you’ve done yes so the piece of work is um is currently looking at how the what what are all the types of
Shocks and stress that we have so we’re not just looking now at the standard ones like earthquakes and flooding and tsunamis those kinds of things we’re now looking more broadly at what’s affecting the sector so Financial political technological any disruption that affects the sector to work with the the
Sector to try and make it more resilient so understanding what did they do in the Global crisis for instance Financial Glo Global crisis how similar is that to what they did in covid or how similar is that to what they would do if they had an event that affected their business uh
Power outage for to or three weeks and so we’re looking at the shocks that to to an organization plus we’re looking at the stresses we’re trying to understand what are the commonalities between those in order to start building resilience around those issues those more those com those common features because what we
What we find is when there’s a disaster the kind of rules get Rewritten each time and everybody kind of scrambles to kind of get into trying to try to understand what what are they supposed to do construction industry go hey well we’re going to be rebuilding but they don’t really know what that
Means or how how to do it or what the complications are around that and so we’re trying to build knowledge and resilience in the system so that they will go we understand we’ve been through this before we know what the commonalities are we can we can now use
That knowledge to improve how we recover from events so that’s where we we we are with that piece of work okay no that that’s great I thought that was quite a fascinating piece of work because of course that leads into you know how to build capacities and and uh in what
Different sectors do we need to build capacities to improve the resilience as well correct let me see did you know please raise your hand the virtual hand and so your window pops up right in uh in the first place so I know you have a question well I have a follow-up
Question so you know you you you you uh your your talk was about uh you know your your life and journey through Academia uh being women researcher so now coming fast forward into 2023 uh you know there’s a lot of emphasis on work life balance and so on
Have you have you seen that affecting Academia and in in a positive way or also industry in New Zealand uh where where you know the issues that uh you had mentioned are being addressed so that there’s equal opportunity for everybody yeah I think I think the good
Thing that I’ve seen is the flexible working policies that institutions now have that creates a a kind of culture that you don’t have to be 9 to-5 that you can work at different times the um off off-site working as well so the work from home I think that’s really really
Use useful it’s not for everybody but I think some you know that flexibility has created opportun more opportunities I think to keep your research and your work going when when you’re trying to balance other other things I mean you know it’s not just children it’s kind of elderly parents we’ve kind of colleagues
Dealing with sick relations elderly parents you know everyone has these things that happen in their lives they’re usually temporary they and and we ought to accept that during that temporary time they may not be as productive but they’re going to be more productive later because they’re going to be so
Happy that you’ve supported them you know so the so people people want to do their best on the whole and sometimes you can’t do your best because your external circumstances affect that and we need to just accept that everybody’s life has when you see mine has ups and
Downs and you know changes of Direction and all those kinds of things it’s just an it’s just an ordinary life and I think everybody has that so to know that your colleagues that are going through some things that they need support for at times and they will and that they pay
That back in dividends because when you need support they’ll be there and I think that’s a really a real shift I think from the early days like the 80s and 90s when it was very very much a nto5 or you know a kind of boxed in approach to work I think the flexibility
The work life balance the career breaks they’re not affecting careers as much as they you know that the career breaks are not affecting careers as much as an acceptance of them yeah we have made some structural changes in that regard also at at puru and that that has really uh been quite
Quite good approach but in terms of uh you know research funding uh have you seen any uh uh shortfall for women researchers in in acquiring research funding in uh New Zealand or other parts of the world where you have been yeah I think that’s a well I’ve read things and
And I think that there’s a there’s a bit of a problem there I think with women leading major grants I still think there’s a kind of less they’re less likely to win major grants and I don’t know why that is but um yeah I I can’t I haven’t got an
Answer for it I just think it’s something to watch and to think about and to and to analyze and to bring up and say is this a structural thing is there some in inherent discrimination in a system or is it just that we just you know we don’t have enough women bidding
I we’re certainly doing a lot of work at Massie to get get the the women’s staff bidding for Grants and running grants and I’ve had in my role as associate Dean is part of that is to kind of say this grant is one that you should be
Going for and it’s the similar with promotions you know we know that the women only go for promotion when they’re absolutely ready whereas my male colleagues and I see this all the time they will still go for promotion when they’re not ready and they’ll just chance it but they’ll get the feedback
And they’ll get the recognition that they’re ambitious and forward thinking and so it’s about saying to women staff put your application in put it in early get that feedback get that recognition that you’re ambitious you’ll probably get it the following year then you might not get it the following year if you’re
Waiting till you’re absolutely perfect so you could miss another year so this is you know these are the kinds of conversations that that we have and women some some some people we then they might go well actually I’m not going to take that advice I’m still really
Cautious and I need all the boxes ticked fine but that’s that’s okay but we do notice that there is a difference there and that that we can do something about it by providing that encouragement and support so we have number of women researchers in the audience today uh so
You know please if you have any questions uh uh please raise your hand or just open your mic and and go ahead and ask the question uh and while you’re thinking let me asking the oh okay so mag go ahead please I’ll hold my question go ahead uh hi uh that’s a great
Presentation I have a personal question uh so if you were to go to go back in time would you choose a different career path like going to a to the industry or would you even consider going to a different speciality other than civil engineering yeah that’s a great question and one that
I think about you know reasonably often um there were there were Forks in the road and I could have taken any for any different fork and I think I would have been happy with with a different career so I think I would have been happy with a civil engineering career and certainly
The colleagues who did Civil Engineering the two women who did Civil Engineering with me they one of them is a um is very senior in a in a engineering company in the UK and doing very well and really loves loves the role and has had to again struggle through different things
Through children and changing jobs and changing careers but when I look at her and I think oh she’s got a great life I think well I also have a great life so it’s kind of hard to know right you kind of take a pathway and you hope for the best
I wish I’d built a skyscraper I that would have been cool it would have been cool to be able to say look I built that building that would have been pretty cool but then what’s the sacrifice I would have had to make to do that would have been pretty
Huge I think I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have come to New Zealand if I was going to build in London for instance I would have had a very different life so you know you can always pose these questions to yourself I mean overall it’s been a
Fantastic career it’s great to be in the University of seen lots of changes I’m very happy where I am at the moment and Messi university is a good place to be you know we’re going through changes like a lot of other institutions but generally got great colleagues very
Energetic young group of people that I work with um keep me on my toes and uh yes and I can see myself continuing for you know quite a while still so does probably doesn’t quite answer your question but I think if someone said flip a coin at or
Someone said you can choose to to change your life I wouldn’t change it now I would have got done the same thing now but there were certainly times I think during my career when I thought I probably should be doing something different thank you M for that question
Uh we almost running out of time so if somebody has a pressing question Rini go ahead please uh thank you suan it’s an amazing presentation and U very inspiring um particularly I’m a mid career academic I’m from ourm might University in Melbourne um so you raised a very
Important point there that um under representation of women leading major grounds so um do you have any advice to professional bodies like CIB having a central role in this um sort of canvas of linking uh all the parties together stakeholders together do you think CIB has a role in there to develop uh
Leadership programs or some kind of a um strategic activity space well the short answer will be yes I think that would be um a great thing for CIB to start working on because I think you could support midcareer staff to go into say Horizon bids or you
Could support them to be part of the Australian bidding system the thing about so so I so I’ve used CIB members into my into my grants that I’ve bid I’ve put bids in as International advisors and that that’s they’ve always been people have always been Keen to be
Part of that I think the wider question about encouraging women to bid there more of a wider question there about how do we get how do we ensure that women are bidding into those major grants and have the support and confidence of their colleagues to do that and there’s
Probably a bit of work to do in the institutions maybe in maybe rmit is good I don’t know but certainly I’ve seen some instit never pay any attention to that and we should be we should be kind of bringing all our midcareer staff into positions where they can apply for major
Grants and they’re supported by the institution to do that so some of the things we’ve been doing at Massi more recently is putting grant writers with um with our staff members so we’ve basically repairing them up with people who know the grant system and we’ll be able to help them navigate the system
And we pay for these people to work alongside our academics and we say we think this is a grant a million dollar Grant or a 10 million dollar grant that you should be going for here’s some support and here they will help you work out what you need including what
Connections you might need to support you in writing that and we’re having some success in that we’re not having full success but the bidding system is so weird anyway but we’re having at least some success in confidence building and having bids that can be used for multiple grants as well so
Having a kind of Base this is what I do this is what the bid is about this is what the pro project is about how do we put it to multiple places to maximize the chances of it being successful so those are some of the some of the things
We’re doing it’s not gendered it’s kind of to both to anybody who comes forward and we ly promoting that but but I’ve been encouraging women in particular to apply because I had noticed that a lot was would not applying or were second or third you know on on a bid including
Myself I’ve done that myself I’ve been happy to sit back and be third on a bid that I would prefer somebody else to to run so I think it’s just um it’s just about knowing that that you can do something about it thank you very
Much uh we we have just about a minute uh anybody else has a pressing question please uh raise your hand or open your mic all right well as I always do let me ask my last question then and uh so San thank you again for this has been a very
Uh exciting and very wonderful presentation and we really appreciate you taking time early in the morning uh making this this uh presentation but uh you know you mentioned uh number of uh mentors really who’s who a list of who’s who that that you have had uh the advantage of having interacted with uh
You know Will Smith Roger Flanigan Martin skitmore and and the and the list goes on how what would you uh advise you know Young researchers upcoming researchers uh the role of mentoring in in what they should do in that regard yeah I mean to me it was kind of
Pretty critical to have mentors and I don’t think these people would have said that they were mentoring they I think they were just doing they were just being nice and kind and interested in what I was doing but if but I think it’s more to the senior academics you know the showing an
Interest in somebody’s project and following through with the how you’re doing or I saw that paper actually makes such a difference to a younger staff member because they feel that they’re on the right track sometimes it can be very lonely and you you know as you know
Yourself you know you follow up an idea for a while and you’re on your own and um and I think that the when senior staff and cib’s great for that because it’s an opportunity they have lots and lots of different activities through the year and it’s an O opportunity for
Senior staff to kind of give back and say Hey you know I can help this person in my field who’s you know doing this stuff and I’m really interested in but it’s also G good for youngest younger staff to see that there’s people who are willing to help and and those people
Change you know like when Martin skore moved to Q you know I was probably one of the first P people to email him saying great you’re over here right I’m coming over to q and I spent a couple of you know sabatical you know just part
Parts of sabatical in Q just so that I could go and chat with him because UK was obviously when I went back to the UK on trips I would try and see people but it wasn’t always possible because it’s a holiday and I’m trying to see family but
Certainly you know that kind of that kind of mentorship and giving back and then as mentoring for younger people just looking for those people in your field it doesn’t have to be in your institution um and you you know you’ll find people who are willing and they may
Not be full professors they may be associate professors that want to develop their International Network and you you become part of that and so you become part of their you know cohort and as you go through you know that that that Network you’ll work you’ll start working with with people and I’m seeing
That more with our Massie staff who are quite Junior a lot of them so they are making those connections and being encouraged to make those connections and the mentoring spread more broadly it’s not I’ve got a mentor and that Mentor is helping me it’s much better to have a
Broader canvas of people to work with that you you get different things from different ideas from thank you suzan that there is a great piece of advice uh and with with that said I want to thank you one once more for taking time and uh this has
Been really exciting uh with all the questions and and and the responses you can see that this is quite a bit of interest uh to to the audience so thank you again much and thanks to all the all those who are in the audience for uh staying with us throughout the seminar
And uh uh you know our series continues I look forward to next week and we we are going to have Professor ruini Ed sing she’s in the audience today as well uh is going to be one of our speakers uh uh next Friday so please stay tuned and
I look forward to seeing you all next week so thank you all bye thank you goodbye