“Ultimately, I look forward to the day when a woman leading a high-risk construction site is no longer a headline-worthy novelty, but a standard, respected reality across South Africa,” says Chadé Bowles, Regional SHEQ Manager at GVK-Siya Zama. For Bowles, reaching that reality starts with the culture built on site every day.
As the first female SHEQ Manager at GVK-Siya Zama, Bowles has spent fourteen years building a career, and a philosophy, around the idea that safety in construction depends on more than regulations and paperwork. This Women’s Month, her journey offers insight into what it takes to build a genuine safety culture in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
Bowles grew up surrounded by a family of builders, though she never expected to forge a career in the industry herself. After completing her studies and taking a gap year, she joined her father on site for what was meant to be a temporary assignment. It became the starting point of her career instead. While initially drawn to site production, she soon recognised how closely a project’s success is tied to the people delivering it, and came to see the workforce as the backbone of the industry, deserving of protection above all else.
Earning trust on site
Having progressed from HSE Officer to Coordinator and now Regional SHEQ Manager, Bowles says one of her most important lessons has been that safety cannot be driven by paperwork alone. The GVK-Siya Zama team’s work on the Zithulele District and Madwaleni Hospital projects illustrates the point. Remote sites can be volatile at first, but over time, the team built relationships with the surrounding community. “It came from showing up consistently and proving that we cared about the people and communities around us,” she says.
That shift in approach, from rigid, clipboard-style policing towards genuine engagement, has changed how workers relate to safety standards on her sites, helping them understand the reasoning behind the safety standards they follow every day. She also stresses that safety cannot sit with the SHEQ team alone. When leadership across a project, from Contracts Directors down to site teams, shows real commitment, safety becomes everyone’s job rather than one department’s responsibility.
Creating space for women to lead
As a woman in construction, Bowles says establishing her voice early, with resilience and firm boundaries, was essential to earning her place in the industry. But she believes that a seat at the table should also create room for others. Younger women entering construction can struggle to be heard, and she sees it as her responsibility to help them feel welcomed and able to contribute meaningfully, encouraging those who have progressed to use their influence to lift the next generation up with them.
For Bowles, progress must go beyond representation targets. She points to practical changes, such as female-fitted PPE and proper site sanitation, as small but telling signals of who the industry is truly built for.
A changing construction industry
Bowles is encouraged by the industry’s gradual shift towards more collaborative, people-centred leadership, and believes a diverse workforce brings different strengths and ways of solving problems to site management.
For Bowles, that shift starts with the relationship between a leader and their team. “I want my team to know that they can always rely on me to have their back, and I hope that gives them the courage to strive for greater things. When your team trusts you, that is when you can challenge and empower them to become the best version of themselves, both personally and professionally,” she says. That, she says, is what leading with purpose means to her.
