Bright ideas help create an equitable industry

Supporting innovation and 'bright ideas' is an integral part of the National Association of Women in Construction's (NAWIC) work to create more equitable industry by fostering cultural change.

- Cathryn Greville

NAWIC offers two Bright Ideas Grants - one for individuals and one for businesses - which provide seed funding to support change initiatives aimed at attracting, retaining and advancing women in construction.

With this funding, recipients are able to launch new business ventures, initiatives or ideas which have a positive impact for the sector, ultimately seeing innovation get off the ground.

2025 Bright Ideas grant winners

This year's NAWIC Bright Ideas Grants have been awarded to an awareness raising careers website portal and a bold work experience initiative aiming to break down barriers.

The grants serve as an important way to actively support innovative projects that attract women to the construction industry and ensure it is clear they have a strong place in it.

We need more than 400,000 new workers over the next 5 years, and we are barely touching the full talent pool with only 12.4 per cent women overall, and only 3.4 per cent representation of women in the trades.

Our focus must be on building a sector that people - of all genders, races, ages, strengths and abilities - choose to join and stay.

To do so, we must tackle the culture of the sector head-on.

Embedding sustainable and wide-spread cultural change necessarily requires different perspectives and ideas to be brought to the table and involved in solution design and implementation.

Contributions should be sought from across the sector and those impacted by it.

Sometimes a bright idea just needs a bit of a leg up to come to fruition and generate significant positive outcomes.