In one move, Mirams doubled the Sydney contractor’s footprint and made it a player of scale in the booming Victorian construction market.
But it doesn’t come without scarring. As Mirams makes clear over the course of our lunch, disrupting construction is also very personal. Her proposal sounds logical. But Mirams is ruffling feathers in an industry notoriously resistant to change; in 2016, consultancy McKinsey famouslyThe construction union is all for it. But her colleagues who run the industry aren’t so happy. Mirams’ signing in 2020 of a five-day agreement with the CFMEU in NSW prompted Building Commissioner David Chandlerof “rolling over and opening the door to unsustainable costs and practices” that he said would harm the industry.
Public sector clients are keen to push the change and Mirams, who wants to boost her new Victorian presence in government work, sees public work as the best place to pursue change.Born Alison Hocking to marine engineer dad John and school teacher mum Helen, she grew up in Sydney’s upper north shore suburb of Lindfield, with a sister, Jennifer, who is now a civil engineer.
That particular experience raises another question about the nature of a building site as a workplace and the quality of what it produces. Construction lawyers are alreadyDespite the unfriendly start, Mirams stayed at the company for the next 16 years.“The culture at Multiplex, when I started, was work hard and play harder,” she says. “And it was very addictive. You wanted to be at work.”
from federal government agency WGEA show women last year accounted for just under 30 per cent of professionals in construction, below the economy-wide average of 54 per cent.“If you’re sitting in your office and you’re looking at dads around you working at five o’clock or six o’clock there is a mum who has left work to pick up kids or isn’t working so she can pick up kids,” she says. “We actually need to fix the industry for men and women [to] benefit.
You go for it Alison. To hell with those whose noses may be put out of joint