A four-bedroom house in West Auckland that goes to auction this weekend has broken new ground: it was designed and built by a near all-female crew.
The house at 56 Samuel Marsden Place, in Whenuapai, was worked on by a team of 48 women as part of a project by Fletcher Living to raise female visibility in the construction industry. It will also be sold on-site by a female auctioneer, Julia Rust from Apollo Auctions, following a sales campaign by two of fletcher Living's female agents.
While the house does not quite reach Fetcher Living’s target of a 100% female build crew, two more all-female builds are in the planning stage as a way to grow and hold on to the team that put together Marsden Place.
Project instigator Aurelie Le Gall, branch manager for Fletcher Living’s Auckland north region, said was pleased with the project’s initial success.
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“We want to grow from the 48 women to 100 or 200. The women who were involved are absolutely keen to be involved, and we’ve had quite a few more put their hand up,” she said.
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The point of the project, dubbed BUILDhers, was intended to provoke conversation about the lack of female representation in the building and construction industry in what Le Gall called “just a little bit of disruption”.
Le Gall, who came into the construction sector through recruitment hiring labour for the building industry, eventually transitioned to her operational role running the design and building teams for a territory for Fletcher.
“There were not many female customers, not many female clients, not even a lot of drive to encourage women at the time, 10 years ago,” she told OneRoof.
“Now there is a National Association of Women in Construction, a very active organisation for women in construction.” The company also tapped into Women in Trades organisation, as well as personal networks.
“It was all hands on deck to spread the word.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with some of the crew who worked on the home. Photo / Supplied
Le Gall said the talent shortages across the industry, including design and engineering, made her conclude that it was crucial that construction be made attractive to the previously ignored half the workforce – the female half.
In 2023 fewer than 16% of tradespeople were women, with only 3.8% on the tools, according to Stats New Zealand. She said trades such as roofing, foundation, plumbing and drainage and cladding were behind others such as electricians and carpentry in diversifying.
It has taken a year from raising the idea of using a woman-only build team to having the finished house ready to go on the market.
“I’m a big gender diversity champion for our industry, driving initiatives within the [Fletcher] building group to encourage more women into our industry,” Le Gall told OneRoof.
Project instigator Aurelie Le Gall, of Fletcher Living, shown here at the launch of the BUILDhers project. Photo / Supplied
Builder Sylvia Campbell and some of the crew starting on the house. Photo / Supplied
“We’re doing the job internally, we’ve got a really good proportion of females,” she said, adding that she is one of three female site managers out of 18 in Auckland. A company spokeswoman said that in Fletcher Livings’ wider residential construction teams, 10 out of its 47 site managers, assistant site managers and customer care/maintenance managers in Auckland and Canterbury were women.
Across the company’s senior executive and board, five out of 19 were women, including acting chair Barbara Chapman.
“We’ve got a good mix of male and female in our design teams, our procurement teams and we’re starting to get some wins on the board.”
The four-bedroom house has three bathrooms, two living rooms and luxury finishes. Photo / Supplied
She said looking at her part of Auckland, where 100 houses a year are built and there might be 100 contractors on-site at any one time, it was very quickly obvious that there were few, if any, women.
“What bothered me is we’re a big residential developer, and while we don’t employ people, the contractors and sub-contractors actually build the houses, we have site managers and project managers who coordinate the programme of building on every single site.
“It was about growing a team, from that one house the [tradeswomen] can continue to work with us on another project.”
Le Gall realised that the few tradeswomen were isolated, so pitched the idea of recruiting a female-only crew to her senior executives.
"Number one [was] to identify some female talent we can continue working with and also to create a disruptive project.”
Finding women with the right level of experience in key trades such as scaffolding and cladding meant that with only five months to round up a team, the project had about 75% women.
Two more houses with all-female crews are in the planning stages by Fletcher Living. Photo / Supplied
“Identifying enough females and that was very, very challenging. We are volume builders and we build at pace. We didn’t want to do a small house, it was difficult to attract females who had sufficient all-female crew. You can’t put [a build] on hold if a crew wasn’t available.”
She said contractors and male colleagues have been amazingly supportive, adding that “if we’re bringing amazing talented females on the journey that we had had a positive experience for them,” driven by the site manager for the project, Jasmin Lawrence.
“She loved that some of the apprentices got to step up and get to the next stage of the build they hadn’t had exposure to just yet. She was there every step of the way, coaching, supporting, encouraging.”
Now the property is on the market, the company has featured the all-female team on sales materials and in social media, to the delight of the female sales team.
Le Gall said: “I can tell you this house was built with love and joy. We’re preparing some amazing collateral for the future homeowners so they get to be part of the house and see the women who’ve been involved because that’s quite special.”
Le Gall said the company wants to continue all-female builds long-term.
“In a couple of years, all I want to see is, on any given day on any of our sites, plenty of females in the scene.
“We want to see them scale up. It’s really important to me, how do I enable these amazing women to run their own business so they can be the ones driving the big ute and be financially independent and being able to buy those big homes that we build.
“And then it’s a circle, they’ve got females working for them and they keep paying it forward.”
- 56 Samuel Marsden Place, Whenuapai, will be auctioned on March 23
