Construction has started on Bank Street Park in Sydney’s Bays Precinct. The NSW Government has set a target of 50 per cent women across the project’s workforce. The industry average is 12 per cent. Here is what that ambition looks like in practice, and what it would take to stick.
The Project
Bank Street Park is a 1.1-hectare public open space taking shape at the edge of Blackwattle Bay in Sydney’s inner west.
It is the first green space to be delivered as part of the wider Bays Precinct redevelopment, a long-term urban transformation project connecting Bays West, Blackwattle Bay and the new Sydney Fish Market. The park sits adjacent to the Glebe Island Bridge and will eventually feed into a planned 15-kilometre harbour walk stretching from Rozelle Bay to Woolloomooloo.
Head contractor is BESIX Watpac, working under Infrastructure NSW. The park is expected to open in 2027. At peak construction, the workforce is anticipated to reach around 100 people.
The build itself includes a playground, multipurpose court, First Nations-inspired shelter structures, a kayak pontoon, amenity facilities, and new footpaths and cycleways that will connect into the broader harbour walk network.
None of that is unusual for a public infrastructure project of this type and scale. What is unusual is the workforce target attached to it.
The Target
The Minns Labor Government, through Infrastructure NSW, has set a target of 50 per cent female participation across the project lifecycle for Bank Street Park.
The current industry average sits at 12 per cent.
By the time construction was announced in March 2026, BESIX Watpac reported that 87 per cent of its project delivery team on Bank Street Park were women.
That figure is notable. It is also worth reading carefully.
The 87 per cent refers to the delivery team as of project launch, not the full construction workforce. As the build scales toward its peak of approximately 100 workers, the composition of that workforce, including trades and subcontractors, will be the real test of whether the 50 per cent participation target can be met in practice.
There is an important distinction here. Office-based and project management roles have been attracting women into the construction industry at higher rates for some years. On-site skilled trade roles remain a different story.
Where the 12 Per Cent Actually Comes From
The 12 per cent figure cited as the industry average is frequently referenced in workforce diversity discussions, but it requires context.
That number captures total female employment across the construction sector, including administration, project management, estimating, design coordination, HR, finance and other non-trade functions. When the lens narrows to on-site trade labour specifically, the percentage of women drops considerably. Estimates for women in trade and labouring roles in Australian construction consistently sit below five per cent.
This matters because it shapes what the 50 per cent target actually means in practice, and where the structural effort needs to go.
Reaching 50 per cent female participation across a project lifecycle that includes management, coordination and site roles requires a very different approach depending on which part of the workforce you are targeting.
The NSW Government’s Women in Construction program, which sits behind this initiative, has been focused on expanding participation in both areas. But the harder work, and the more structurally significant work, is in the trades.
What the Site Is Doing Differently
Inclusive site design is one area where practical change is happening on Bank Street Park.
From day one, site amenities have been established with accessibility, safety and a range of worker needs in mind. This is a common-sense starting point that tends to be underestimated.
The physical environment of a construction site, its facilities, its safety culture, its communication norms, has historically been designed around a single workforce profile. Changing who works on site without changing how a site operates creates friction that often leads to early attrition.
BESIX Watpac’s approach on Bank Street Park, establishing inclusive site conditions as a baseline rather than a retrofit, is a practical step. Whether it translates into genuine retention outcomes as the full workforce comes on board will be worth watching.
The Bigger Picture: Why the Pipeline Is Thin
Setting a target is one thing. Having the workforce pipeline to meet it is another.
Australia’s construction sector is experiencing a well-documented labour shortage. Apprenticeship completions across the trades remain insufficient relative to projected demand. And within that already-thin pipeline, women account for a small fraction of new entrants.
The reasons are layered. Some are structural: site cultures that are slow to change, limited visible role models, pathway programs that are underfunded or short-lived. Some are perceptual: persistent public narratives that position construction as physically demanding, low-status work, or that associate it with specific kinds of masculinity.
Projects like Bank Street Park can contribute to changing the perceptual side of that equation. A high-profile government build with a majority female project team generates a different kind of signal than a brochure campaign or careers day.
The structural side takes longer and requires sustained investment: in pre-apprenticeship programs, in trade training support, in industry bodies and employers willing to carry the cost of culture change through an entire project, not just its first weeks.
What This Means for the Broader Industry
Bank Street Park is a government-funded infrastructure project. The conditions that make a 50 per cent target feasible on a project like this, procurement requirements, contractor obligations, government program support, do not automatically exist in the private residential and commercial building markets.
For builders operating in those markets, the relevance of this project is less about replicating the specific target and more about what it demonstrates is possible when conditions are deliberately designed rather than left to default.
The construction industry has a recruitment problem that is not going away. Not enough people are entering the trades. The pool of potential workers being ignored or lost is large. Women represent a significant part of that untapped labour.
This is not a values argument. It is a capacity argument.
Builders struggling to find qualified, reliable labour do not have the luxury of ignoring half the working population.
What government-led projects like Bank Street Park can do is begin normalising the expectation. Procurement conditions shape contractor behaviour. Contractor behaviour shapes site culture. Site culture shapes who stays in the industry long enough to matter.
The Questions Worth Asking
Announcements around gender targets in construction often generate enthusiasm at launch and less attention at completion. The more useful questions tend to be the ones asked later.
What percentage of the full peak workforce on Bank Street Park, including subcontracted trade roles, will be women?
Of the women who join the project, how many are in roles they did not hold before? Is this creating genuine career entry points, or redistributing existing industry participants across projects?
What happens to those workers once Bank Street Park is done? Do the conditions that supported their participation follow them into subsequent projects, or does the model only work under government contract conditions?
These are fair questions. They are not a criticism of the initiative. They are the standard by which any serious workforce development claim should eventually be measured.
The Bottom Line
Bank Street Park is a real project with a genuinely ambitious workforce target. The early numbers from BESIX Watpac suggest the intent is serious, not cosmetic.
The construction industry needs more workers. It also needs better ones, in the sense of more skilled, more stable, more professionally supported. Broadening the pipeline is part of meeting that need.
Whether Bank Street Park becomes a model that genuinely shifts how Australian construction projects are staffed, or whether it remains a well-intentioned outlier, will depend on what follows.
The target is set. The site is live. The more interesting story is the one told in 2027 when the park opens.
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