Annie Marston, IBPSA-USA: promoting equality and diversity in construction
IBPSA-USA recently established a new committee dedicated to equality and diversity. Dr. Annie Marston of Baumann Consulting, the new committee chair, has been active in IBPSA for the last 5 years and a member of the IBPSA-USA board since 2015. Her interview on the new committee was published in the most recent IBPSA newsletter. Below is an excerpt of her interview.
Christina J Hopfe (CJH): Can you tell us something about IBPSA-USA’s new equality group: who is it aimed at? How did it begin/ who had the idea? What is the correct name of the group and its purpose?
Annie Marston (AM): The group is called the IBPSA-USA Equality Committee and our mission statement is to encourage and retain women and minorities in the simulation community. The committee now has 9 members of all genders and ethnicities. The idea evolved from a discussion I had with the IBPSA-USA board when a talented engineer and modeler in her early 30s had spoken to me about leaving her job and doing something completely different. It wasn’t because she didn’t enjoy the work; it was because she found the office politics too exhausting. This really resonated with me: I was coming off a hard few weeks myself and was beginning to wonder whether the extra effort was worth the love of the work.
So this is when I started the conversation. I wanted not only to retain talented people within our community but to make sure that the next generation was more mixed – that it was easier for them to pass through their careers without being the only ones in the room, without feeling like another place might suit them better. The more I talk about this the more I see it isn’t only women that are fighting to stay in the community; many talented people mid-way in their career are feeling lost and under-appreciated in their roles, especially the practitioners who deal with the wider construction industry day to day. I am hoping that we can all learn and help to keep the talent as well as encouraging new talent into our industry without having to worry about gender or ethnicity.
CJH: What are your plans (short term and long term) to develop greater equality in the industry?
AM: This year we have several goals:
- Hold a Q&A session at the ASHRAE and IBPSA-USA Simbuild 2016 conference to introduce ourselves and begin the conversation
- Create a web page on the IBPSA-USA site, which will include some profiles of female and minority simulation professionals
- Do a market survey to collect data about our industry and its make up and display this on the website
- Set up a mentoring program
- The committee itself is going to become more visible on forums answering questions, hopefully to encourage others to do the same
- Have some kind of Q & A section on the website to answer people’s questions if they are having specific issues, to help support them
- These are our short term goals; we will see what works and what doesn’t. Next year I think we will focus more on getting talent into the industry and ways we can do this.
