Heard the one about the woman who nearly became a teacher, had second thoughts and ended up running the blue riband bit of one of the country’s best-known builders? It sounds a great tale but, in fact, Alison Cox’s story lifts the lid on a problem that the construction industry has still not really managed to figure out – how to get more women into the industry and keep them in it.

The managing director of Sir Robert McAlpine’s London business, which is now overhauling Broadgate and nearing the end of building a five-star hotel at Hyde Park Corner called the Peninsula, had actually left the business in 2003. “My husband’s job took us abroad,” Cox recalls. “That was the time my children were born as well.”

She eventually returned in 2012 but it was a close-run thing. “I nearly retrained as a teacher,” she admits. “I got really close to leaving the industry. I couldn’t see how doing a construction role could be compatible with having three young children.”

She does not think that much has changed. “I see everybody working just as hard, just as long hours as they did then.”

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