For International Women’s Day 2025, we meet Catherine Brookes, Strategic Highways Director at McCann.

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we sat down with our Strategic Highways Director, Catherine Brookes, to talk about her career, and what it means to be a woman in the Civil Engineering industry and how she feels being the first board director at McCann who is female.

 

Thank you for taking the time to sit with us. To start with, can you talk about how long you’ve worked for McCann and your career journey to getting here?

I have been working at McCann for nine months now, but know the Company well, having worked with them for many years in previous roles.

I started my career at the University of Manchester undertaking a Civil Engineering degree and have been in the industry for over 35 years.

When I first joined the industry very few women applied for engineering undergraduate degrees, but there was a drive during my A levels to get women into the industry, and it was something that appealed to me. My best friend from school was also excited and enthusiastic about civil engineering and that rubbed off on me. She went on to become a very successful bridge engineer in North Wales.

The first 10 years of my career were spent working in the private sector as a Bridge Engineer. I then joined National Highways where I spent 21 years covering a wide variety of roles, including a few senior leadership roles for the last 10 years or so. During my time at National Highways, I was proud to cover the role of Chief Highways Engineer, which realised a lifetime ambition.

I left National Highways a few years ago to move back into the private sector, and it seemed like a natural step to work for an organisation like McCann that I knew well and had worked with previously.

 

What does your role involve day-to-day?

My role is to make sure that our strategic highway clients are very happy with the work we are doing, currently, this is principally National Highways.

We work hard every day to do the best job we can on the National Highways Scheme Delivery Framework (SDF), which is the comprehensive renewals framework in England that is there to maintain, repair and renew the Strategic Road Network (SRN).

I support the SDF Contract Managers (Andy Bates in the North, PJ Sweeney in the Midlands and Michael Nicholson in the South) who manage the day-to-day management and running of the SDF Projects. I am very thankful to them and their teams on the ground delivering the projects.

The next generation of the SDF framework will be coming to market in the next 18 months, so our team are heavily focusing on preparing for the bid. National Highways are a great client to work for and I would love to continue the collaborative partnerships we have built.

 

What is it like working in the Civil Engineering and Construction Industry?

I feel very privileged to work in this industry. A lot has changed in the last 35 years and it’s fair to say there have been good and bad times.

Civil Engineering is not a glamourous job, working on muddy construction sites, but it’s quite exciting and a very rewarding career. It is a great industry socially too: the people work hard, have very tight deadlines, and for the guys on site the work is physically hard (especially when it’s 3am and minus three degrees in winter!), but everyone takes real pride in their work and celebrate all the wins.

A couple of years ago some friends of mine approached me and asked me if I would talk to their daughter about her potential career.  Apparently, I was the only person in our village they knew who openly said that they loved their job; everyone else they had asked had spoken about their jobs negatively. Ella came to work with me for four days of work experience. Fast forward… she is now on an Engineering Graduate Apprentice scheme and is doing very well.

I think for me, I enjoy this career because I find it rewarding and satisfying to see something I have designed or worked on come to life. I still drive down the North Circular Road in London and admire the work I did there in the late 1990s.

 

You are the first female director at McCann, do you feel McCann successfully creates an inclusive environment for its people?

McCann at its core is a family company and, considering the speed with which the Company has grown, it’s incredible that it still feels that way. By its very nature, that makes it feel like an inclusive and accessible company.

Since joining the Company, all the board members including John McCann have been hugely supportive of me. To be fair, they already were, long before I joined. I knew many of the directors from my previous roles and knew I was welcome before I even arrived. There was never a question as to whether my being female might impact my ability to do the job.

I do still feel that we have a way to go to change the outside perception of the civil engineering and construction industry. Public perception, and reality to an extent, is that the vast majority of site workers are men and this is a historically male industry. There is a lot more that leaders in the industry, and we at McCann, can do to change that perception. For example, we need to critically review our recruitment processes and the way we present ourselves to attract a more diverse range of people.

 

What does International Women’s Day (IWD) mean to you?

International Women’s Day (IWD) is a great opportunity to promote the work of this industry and what a great and rewarding profession it can be for women.

It offers the opportunity to reflect on how far we have come and what more we can do in the future to ensure we always attract the best candidates for jobs regardless of their gender, race, age, and other characteristics.

 

The theme this year is “Accelerate Action”, because it is believed that it will take until 2158 (or five generations from now) to reach full gender parity. This year’s focus is on taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality. What does this mean to you?

For me, it means we need to keep the momentum going and we don’t need International Women’s Day to be just the one day a year that we promote this. We need to talk about this in day-to-day life throughout the year and years to come.

At McCann, to make sure we keep momentum, we spent 2024 establishing our Community Groups which are central to our commitment to creating a supportive and inclusive culture. Our current groups cover support and advocacy for Veterans, Families, Abilities, Women, Ethnic Groups, and the Health and Wellbeing of our employees.

I am proud to sponsor the Community Groups and can identify with all of them whether directly or indirectly through my personal experiences, family and friends.

 

In what is a historically male-dominated industry, is there any advice you would give to the next generation of young women joining the industry?

Engineering has a role for everyone, be it super-academic, creative or manual. If you haven’t yet decided on which industry to join, it’s a great one to consider. There is huge diversity of roles in this industry and the wide range of companies that support it.

For anyone, male or female, to thrive in this industry, I would suggest that you should be confident in your abilities, and ready for a challenge. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help and advice from people. Anyone at McCann would be happy to help and point you in the right direction.

 

Is there anything else you wish to add?

I’m really pleased to have had the opportunity to do this interview and to hopefully inspire and attract more women to join the industry. I am eternally grateful to those that have supported me over the years and hope that in turn I can do the same.

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