International Women’s Day and What It Means to Land & Water

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) is ‘an equal world is an enabled world’. Its aim is to forge a path for the continued improvement of gender equality standards across industries. By celebrating female achievements, and challenging the bias often faced within professional sectors, we can all work towards creating a more positive and accepting ideal.

Here at Land & Water, we value this ethos. It is therefore fitting that this IWD we shine a light on the construction and civil engineering sectors, highlighting the incredible women who work for us, and the rewarding careers this industry can offer.

Much like the plants we grow at TES’ nurseries, we believe that gender equality is essential for a business to thrive. We are truly passionate about fulfilling the potential of every woman in our team, at every stage of their career. We want to enable their growth, ensuring they feel equal in our workplace. Creating a nurturing environment within which every employee can flourish is of the utmost importance to Land & Water.

We are exceptionally proud of our track record, not just the number of women we employ, but the talents they possess, the range of positions they fill and their impressive career development with us. In fact, 5 of our 11 strong Senior Management Team members are women. For example, our Head of Estimating and Business Development, Jayne Hornsby, has a track record which speaks for itself. Whilst building her career with Land & Water, Jayne has obtained a HNC in Civil Engineering, an accomplishment which compliments the National Certificate Construction, CSCS Visitor and Frontline Manager qualifications she had already obtained. Jayne is determined, hardworking and committed, whilst her continued success demonstrates the limitless opportunities available to women here at Land & Water.

Women succeed with Land & Water in a variety of roles, not just Senior Management positions. For example, Roma Kateivaite is a Nursery Assistant for our TES team. She has extensive experience in machine seeding and robotic transplanting, and her role is invaluable to TES. In addition to spending time focusing on germination, seed collecting and potting up, she is also responsible for all marginal aquatic plants, not to mention cutting back and weeding. Meanwhile, Roma’s knowledge of UK native plants is second to none. Roma exceeds all expectations as she uses her endless repertoire of knowledge to help shape TES.

Lucy Lee, our Contracts Manager, is also a shining example of female success and determination. Lucy’s hands on approach means she visits all of Land & Water’s live project sites at least every three weeks. During these visits, Lucy engages with the Site Managers and site teams to ensure the projects are running smoothly. Lucy is also responsible for commercial reporting and forecasting both internally and to CRT, writing programmes, methodology, costings and design review. Lucy is wonderfully passionate about all of our projects and we couldn’t be prouder of her professional drive.

As a family run business, values are at the core of everything Land & Water does. From job creation through to environmental solutions, we endeavor to leave every employee, and every project, with a positive sense of consideration and respect. We embrace a holistic approach to teamwork and celebrate all of our employees – gender regardless.

Women make up around 14% of construction industry professionals. This is a statistic we are passionately working to change, alongside the very women who help to make Land & Water the ongoing success that it is. Jayne for example is an advocate for women in construction, she is dedicated to training and sharing her expertise to help young talent progress.

Our entire team’s wonderful attitude, team spirit and skill set leaves us feeling lucky and motivated; by embracing a diverse group of talented people, we feel we have found the key to success. We hope that other companies in our industry will share the same commitment to help forge a flawlessly gender equal world.