Rebecca De Cicco, Founder and Global Chair of Women in BIM has always had a passion for diversity in the built environment.

Having worked across the globe with many different organisations, Rebecca witnessed a lack of female professionals in senior Building Information Modelling (BIM) and digital construction roles. This fired her drive and ambition to create a new supportive environment to share skills, knowledge, insight and best practice – and so the Women in BIM network was born.

Recently hitting an impressive 10-year milestone, the community has now grown to over 1,000+ members, extending to women in six out of the seven continents. The organisation also continues to grow its global reach with regional representatives positioned all over the world.

Here, Rebecca talks us through the past 10 years since Women in BIM’s inception and reflects on her journey as founder.

Can you tell us about founding the organisation and how it’s developed over the past decade?

Women in BIM was set up as a response to the low representation of women in digital construction roles. With the Government Construction Strategy and its release in 2011 prompting a wide variety of industry incentives, the initiative was purely a networking group, aimed to support and grow representation of women in this space.

Having spent almost a decade in the United Kingdom working and living as a construction industry professional, there was a great focus on change, innovation and growth within this time. And with it prompted new discussions, new processes and a focus on digital construction methodologies focused on Building Information Modelling (BIM) and beyond.

Now in its 10th year, Women in BIM continues to grow and has seen a tremendous drive in the last two years where many organisations who work in the built environment on a global level are realising our worth, and why this incentive is such an important one in the digital construction landscape.

Why is getting more women into construction still such a relevant concern for the industry?

The industry continues to struggle with skills shortages on a global level, further highlighted with the impact of the pandemic, which has seen a large number of industry professionals either pivot into new roles in the same industry or leave the industry all together. This is providing huge challenges as we continue to source the right representation for people with skills and the passion for change. All of which is extremely difficult to locate.

The pandemic has not only seen large numbers of women revert back to primary carer positions, but also feel unsupported in the construction industry as we know it. This poses a real risk of losing valuable talent in our sector that we so desperately need.

Globally Women in BIM is supported by over 60 regional representatives in over 35 countries, further highlighting the need for the group to continue to mature and provide support and growth in this space.

Digital adoption is also central to Women in BIM’s agenda. Why is it such a key issue?

The construction industry in the UK is relatively mature when it comes to digital adoption, yet there are still many challenges we are facing. Other regions of the world are far less mature and are struggling with some of the same issues, which is why we aim to ensure the support mechanism and the power of our community on a global level continues to strive.

Learning from others is a key driver for myself personally as an industry professional, but also for the organisation itself. Unfortunately though, there is still a lack of sharing ideas, growing innovation across organisations with digital tools/methods, and adopting new processes.

For Women in BIM, it is not only about drawing more women into this space, but also ensuring that we continue to adapt to the ways in which digital technology, process and requirements evolve.

Can you give us more detail about the work Women in BIM does and why it’s so important?

A primary example of the importance of Women in BIM is our mentoring scheme, now in its third year, where we have seen enormous growth in the last 12 months. Our scheme was launched in 2020 and the numbers from 2020-2021 marginally increased. However this year our numbers doubled, including the number of women looking for this kind of support globally, with over 43 countries now represented.

This is a clear example of the support required to be able to nurture, encourage and provide an outlet for women to have someone in the industry to lean on. We pride ourselves in ensuring that we make as many matches as we can, sometimes across countries, jurisdictions and across roles to make sure we focus on that primary level of support to be able to retain women in these roles.

This links into the core objectives of the group, but also wider economic, social and political goals, of growing female representation and wider diversity across sectors which desperately need it.

Women in BIM also focus on key thought leadership topics around the sector, focusing on areas which are evolving. This includes conversations focused on smarter and safer assets and the requirements of smart technology and data to ultimately influence the way the built environment functions and will continue to innovate.

The themes discussed across our network continue to move beyond BIM and into wider political and environmental concerns and how we help our own organisations and the wider industry continue to innovate in this space. With our webinars now shifting back to live events hosted around the globe, we continue to share ideas and grow our support networks to enable skills and education to be developed.

How would you reflect on your journey over the last 10 years since founding the group?

My experience and knowledge continue to evolve in the digital construction space, advising clients, supporting industry, mentoring and offering guidance and insight to those we work and interact with. As the industry continues to evolve, I still feel that we have a way to go in influencing change, and Women in BIM are in a great position to be able to do this.

As we host multiple events across the world this month, we have time to reflect now on how much we have achieved to influence change. I would like to personally thank all of the strong, intelligent women and men driving the incentive all over the world.

What do you look forward to in the next decade of Women in BIM?

I am so excited to see what the next 10 years bring with it and how we as a community can continue to explore change, innovate and support each other all over the world.

Women in BIM is a global online community with a vision to support, empower and celebrate female BIM and digital construction professionals. Visit the Women in BIM website here.