Sage Civil owner Asha Russell is using custom-painted pink machinery to spark conversations on worksites about attracting more women into the industry and how to keep them there
Based on the Central Coast and in Penrith, Sage Civil has been attracting attention to the opportunities available to women in the industry by painting some of its machinery in bright pink.
This vision kicked off in 2017, and the driving force behind the business is founder and managing director Asha Russell, who over the past 10 years has built Sage Civil from the shell of a D6 dozer into a 100 per cent Australian owned and operated multi-faceted civil earthmoving and machinery hire business.
However, not only has she built a successful business – she has used her position to champion women working in the earthmoving industry and applied her own experience of working for decades in male-dominated environments to make her own business an attractive proposition for other women looking to make the move into civil.
Earthmovers & Excavators caught up with Asha to discuss how she herself found her way into the industry and what change she’d like to see to make it an appealing option for more women.
Diesel in the blood
For Asha, growing up on worksites and around earthmoving equipment was second nature – contrary to most of her friends.
With her father being a diesel mechanic, she’d regularly go from site to site watching him fix earthmoving machines, when she wasn’t at school.
“It was ingrained in me to be on jobsites and around these machines,” Asha says.
“This was a normal thing to do for me growing up.”
Looking to set up a family business, her father bought a few dump trucks and made them available for wet hire. With her start in the earthmoving industry seeing her driving from site to site and collecting dockets, Asha saw the business diversify into not just looking after machines, but also winning project contracts and maintaining them.
“Over that time, I built relationships that are still strong today – and that was nearly 30 years ago,” she says.
After Year 12, she was unsure what career she wanted to pursue, so she picked up a job as a sales representative for an oil company.
“I was 17 at the time and was the first female sales rep selling oils back then,” Asha says.
“In such a male-dominated industry I learned a lot, and I think it was the right training I needed to enter the civil industry.”
Asha continued to sell the company’s oil for a further 20 years as a distributor, whilst also seeing her father’s business continue to win contracts. It was inevitable that eventually she would have the itch to start her own business and manage projects.
“I always knew that I wanted to have my own business in the civil space, so when the opportunity came it made sense,” she says.
This marked the beginning of Sage Civil in 2014 – providing earthmoving and civil work solutions and providing a safe haven for women looking to work in the industry.
Sage Civil
Sage Civil creates a workplace that embraces women working in a diverse team in the earthmoving and civil construction industry, with Asha saying her mission is to overcome the constraints women face when entering the industry.
44 per cent of Sage Civil’s current staff consists of women in non-traditional roles, such as plant operators – far higher than CCF NSW’s estimation of 9.9 per cent of women working in civil across Australia.
However, it took a lot of hard work and determination for Asha to get to where she is today, having started off back in 2014 with just the shell of a D6 Cat dozer. All her savings went into repairing the dozer and bringing it back to life.
“The business really grew and took off once I started cross hiring gear but having my own skilled operators,” she says.
“I eventually started winning contracts and slowly was able to purchase my own machines, with my hard work and consistency paying off.”
Although Asha admired her shiny new machines, the D6 was not forgotten, with Asha still running it as part of Sage Civil’s 50-strong fleet of equipment.
As the business grew, Asha sought to attract more women into taking on more non-traditional roles, often with little to no previous experience of the industry. To help support them in the transition, new staff entering the business are trained up in a buddy system operating the dump trucks.
“Our buddy system allows all non-experienced newcomers to sit with our experienced operators, who have already been trained in this system,” she says.
Once these men and women have completed the buddy system, Asha says they are booked into a registered training organisation (RTO), in order to obtain a resources and infrastructure industry (RII) statement of attainment.
By having this, Asha says operators are deemed competent to operate a machine by themselves.
“This is the gateway opening to be able to start off as a plant operator in a non traditional role in the civil game – then the doors can really open with endless opportunities,” Asha says.
“Without this statement and training buddy system it can be tricky for women to be employed. At Sage Civil they have real-world experience in addition to the statement.”
Once employees have graduated from operating dump trucks, they can be taught how to operate other machines in the fleet and are offered traineeships. Six employees at Sage Civil are currently doing a Certificate III in Civil Construction Plant Operations that runs for two to three years.
“Our women employees are able to be up-skilled much easier at Sage Civil due to our training programs and getting them to work on-site with clients,” she says.
Custom-painted machinery
Highly recognisable, a key staple of Sage Civil’s fleet is its custom-painted pink machinery, which Asha says helps spark conversations about women working in the industry.
“People ask why our machines are pink and it helps to start conversations about making women feel included in the industry and keeping them there,” she says.
“The girls see the colours and get excited about it. They all believe in our mission and it’s just been so wonderful to watch how diversity is moving forward, and inclusion onsite and in the field.”
Some of the brightly coloured machines in the fleet include a pink Cat D10 dozer, pink Cat 730C and 740B dump trucks and a Cat 320 next-gen excavator with a pink boom.
Other machines that are custom painted include Cat 315, 335, 336 and 349 excavators, a 12M grader and skid steers.
“Slowly but surely our vision is coming to life before our very eyes, and it’s a part of who we are as a team,” she says
When asked how the idea for custom-painted machinery came about, Asha credits CCF NSW’s mentoring program for helping her realise that change was needed to attract more women to the industry.
When entering the mentoring program, she didn’t know if she should be applying as a mentor or a mentee – as she still thought she had much to learn.
Realising there were so few women in management roles and barely any who owned their own business in the industry, she decided to be a mentor so she could help inspire others and help change this trend.
Asha’s first match as a mentor was a young female engineer, who shocked Asha with how low the number of women working in the field was.
“I think I learned as much from her as she learned from me, and I was the mentor,” she says.
Sitting with her mentee and brainstorming ideas on how to attract more women into the industry, Asha decided to paint her machinery in eye-catching colours – dedicating Sage Civil’s Cat D10 dozer to the Women in Civil CCF NSW mentoring program.
“We spray painted the D10 pink and I put the Women in Civil CCF NSW mentoring program’s logo all over it,” she says.
Asha’s mission is starting to pay dividends as she says CCF’s recent surveys show women in non-traditional roles has jumped from 4.2 per cent in 2017 to 9.9 per cent currently.
“We’re starting to see much more women out in the field now, with a lot more plant operators,” she says.
“Those stats don’t include traffic control either, which has seen its numbers spike recently, so it would be much higher if it included that role.”
Love of industry
Relationships are a huge part of Sage Civil’s ongoing success; something that Asha says she loves about the industry.
“I like the integrity of old-school relationships. I still believe in it, and I spend a lot of time going to see my clients face to face,” she says.
“A lot of them are also my friends so it’s great to form these relationships.”
She says what she finds most rewarding as a woman working in the earthmoving industry is changing other women’s lives by introducing them to a rewarding career.
“When these women walk into the industry they often have little to no experience, and to help them and watch their life change absolutely thrills me,” Asha says.
“To think I was possibly a part of making this happen for them, makes me so happy.”
To reward her tireless work, in 2019 Asha was awarded the ‘Excellence Award: Women in Civil Construction’ at the CCF NSW people awards. In 2021 she was also awarded the ‘President’s Award’ at the CCF NSW people awards.
“This was a huge achievement for the business and I, due to our commitment to diversity and inclusion,” she says.
Looking to the future, Asha strongly encourages more women to enter the industry, as she hopes to continue to see more women on job sites.
“Don’t hold back, if there’s an opportunity, take it,” she says,
“If you really put your mind to it and build strong relationships with people, the sky’s the limit. I am also a big believer in ‘work hard and the rest will follow’ – you have to consistently put in the effort and show commitment to your job role.”