FMB Northern Ireland urges GCSE students to consider construction as poll points to female role models

The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) Northern Ireland has urged GCSE students to consider a career in construction, citing research that about three in ten adults in the region would be more likely to encourage a child into the industry if they saw more women working in it.

The trade body said that proportion was the highest anywhere in the UK. Its release, dated 9 October 2026 and framed around GCSE results landing, carried the message that there is a place in the industry for everyone, whoever they are.

The FMB built the appeal around two of its members in Northern Ireland, two women who it said took different routes to the same conclusion.

Breige Collins, Office Manager at Marlfield Joinery & Construction, said: "Professionally, construction let me completely change career path. Personally, it gave me the flexibility to balance work and childcare as our family grew."

Two routes in

According to the FMB, Collins trained as a nurse and began helping with paperwork on her days off after her husband set up on his own when the recession closed the construction company he managed in 2011.

Marlfield, which the FMB release places in Portaferry, is a bespoke residential builder with its own in-house cabinetry workshop. Collins now runs client communication, supplier accounts and project management, and still nurses one morning a week, the FMB said. She said the firm has trained two female joiner apprentices.

The FMB's member directory shows Marlfield was established in 2010, became a limited company in 2013 and is run by Company Director Paul Collins, who has direct site management of its projects. The firm won Apprentice of the Year at the FMB's 2025 Regional Master Builder Awards for Northern Ireland.

Jemma Catterson, Business Development Manager at Lowry Building & Civil Engineering in Castlederg, started in a health, safety, environmental and quality role and now helps decide which projects the firm takes on, the FMB said. She said construction offers many opportunities and that it matters that more women and girls see themselves in the industry's future, adding that a perception the industry is not for women may remain but is changing.

Lowry was established in 1961, according to its FMB directory profile, and won Business of the Year at the 2025 Regional Master Builder Awards for Northern Ireland and Building Company of the Year at the 2023 regional awards. In September 2017 the firm took the FMB's UK-wide Master Builder Award for best Commercial Project for its redevelopment of the Silverbirch Hotel in Omagh.

The FMB's case

Gavin McGuire, FMB Northern Ireland Director, said small building firms in the region need the next generation and that the public had told the FMB that seeing women doing these jobs would win them over.

He said: "Breige and Jemma are two of many. Whether you're strongest at maths, design, IT or working with your hands, there's a job on site or in the office behind it that fits." He added that a local college or a local FMB member was the place to start.

The FMB's Northern Ireland release gives no sample size, polling company or figures for other UK nations behind the three in ten finding. In a related series of releases over the summer of 2026 on routes into construction, the FMB cited polling by Savanta among 2,107 UK adults aged 16 and over, interviewed online with fieldwork on 29 July 2026 and weighted to be nationally representative.

In that poll, the FMB's Scotland office reported that 62% of Scottish respondents said a guaranteed job at the end of training would make them more likely to encourage a young person into construction, and 29% said meeting successful tradespeople would.

The FMB said in March 2026, marking Women in Construction Week, that women represent 4% of the UK construction workforce.

The FMB describes itself as the largest trade association in the UK construction industry, with local offices in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.