By Kate Whatley, Raise the Roof founder and Elevate Roofing Advisory Limited director. 

One woman’s mission to redefine the U.K. roofing industry. 

I didn’t come into roofing expecting to change it. But somewhere between running a various commercial roofing and cladding businesses, sitting on boards and watching talented people — especially women — walk away from an industry that should have fought to keep them, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to wait for the industry to get better. I was going to work to build the version of it I believed in. 

That’s what the last few years have been about. Not one project. Not one organisation. A whole ecosystem — deliberately constructed, interconnected and pointed at the same thing: an industry that is more professional, more inclusive, more sustainable and genuinely worth staying in. 

Raise the Roof: From community to movement 

Raise the Roof started as Women in Roofing over 10 years ago as a space for women in the U.K. roofing and built sector to support one another, network, inspire, share and be seen. Women in roofing held many suecessful and well attended conferences and events and built a community of like minded people.  

What it’s becoming now is something bigger. After years of running it as a voluntary group, we are now turning it into a properly structured, commercially sustainable organisation — because good intentions don’t create systemic change.  

Resources do. Infrastructure does. Ambition does. 

This October, Raise the Roof is hosting its first annual conference with the theme "Rise. Lead. Redefine." on 20 October 2026. It’s a full-day event bringing together women across roofing and construction for real conversations about leadership, strategy, visibility and what it actually takes to build a career, or a business, in this industry. 

This isn’t a networking lunch. This is a professional development event with teeth. Keynotes, workshops, panels and an evening celebration — all designed to send delegates back to their businesses and their teams with more clarity, more confidence and a bigger sense of what’s possible. 

We are also honoured to have National Women in Roofing from America joining us for the day making it a truly international affair! 

Rise. Lead. Redefine. isn’t just a conference theme. It’s a brief. 

Elevate Roofing Advisory: Raising the standard of business in the sector 

The second strand of what I’m building is Elevate Roofing Advisory Limited — a specialist consultancy working directly with roofing business owners who are ready to operate at a higher level. 

The roofing industry in the UK has an enormous skills gap, a professionalism gap, and — I’ll say it — a leadership gap. There are genuinely talented operators in this sector who are running businesses on gut instinct and graft alone, with no strategic framework, no structured people processes and no clear vision for where they’re going. 

Elevate exists to change that. 

Working on a two-day deep dive model followed by flexible ongoing advisory support, I work with owners across four focus areas: strategy, people and processes, brand development and long-term goal setting. It’s not generic business coaching. It’s built specifically for the realities of running a roofing business — the subcontractors, the seasonality, the client relationships, the pressure of being both the expert and the entrepreneur. 

The businesses I work with come out of it with clarity. With a plan. And with someone in their corner who genuinely understands the landscape they’re operating in working alongside their teams and writing the next chapter with them. 

The industry deserves better than operating by default. Elevate is how I’m helping to make that happen, one business at a time. 

SPV training solutions: Building the workforce of the future 

Training is where it all starts. You can’t have a better industry without better-prepared people entering it. That’s why my work with SPV Training Solutions matters so much to me. SPV delivers specialist roof sheeting and cladding training — technical, hands-on, industry-relevant. It’s the kind of training that creates genuine competency, not just compliance. 

This isn’t box-ticking. It’s about raising the baseline of what the industry expects from its workforce — and what its workforce expects from itself. When people are properly trained, properly supported and properly valued from the start of their careers, the whole system gets better. 

After partnering with Juniper Training in 2019 and setting up a training centre in conjunction, together we have been involved in bringing over 200 new entrants into the roofing sector making a real difference to the industry and the communities we live in. 

Every one of those people is evidence that this industry, when it opens its doors properly, has more than enough space for the talent that wants to come in. 

I have always been an ambassador of apprenticeships and apprentices bring fresh ideas, enthusiasm and are the future of the industry. 

The bigger picture: What I’m actually fighting for 

Let me be direct about what underpins all of this. I believe the UK roofing industry is capable of being far better than it currently is — more professional, more diverse, more attractive to talent and more respected within the wider built environment. Everything I am working on currently supports my longer term vision.  

Raise the Roof builds community, visibility and professional momentum for women in the sector.  The Rise. Lead. Redefine. Conference creates the flagship moment that the industry calendars around. 

Elevate Roofing Advisory raises the standard of how roofing businesses are run.  

SPV Training Solutions ensures the next generation comes in better equipped than the last. 

None of these exist in isolation. They’re part of the same campaign — the same argument made in different forms — that this industry is worth investing in, and that the people within it deserve to work in something they’re proud of. 

I’ve spent years on boards, in governance roles, in voluntary leadership and in the trenches of commercial leadership. I’ve seen what the industry looks like from every angle. And I’ve never been more convinced that we’re at a genuine inflection point and that will only happen with collaboration and forward thinking.  

By Kate Whatley for National Women in Roofing.

Why National Roofing Week is about all of us.

Every year, National Roofing Week gives our industry a moment to pause and celebrate the work we do. The craft, the grit, the skill. The people who show up every single day in all weathers, doing work that the world depends on but rarely notices until something goes wrong.

And that celebration matters. It genuinely does.

But above and beyond celebration we know that our industry has more potential than it’s currently realising. And unlocking that potential requires us to do something that doesn’t always come naturally to people who are used to working independently, in their own patch, on their own terms.

It requires us to collaborate. To share. To look beyond our own borders. 

The roof doesn’t stop at the border 

I’m based in the Midlands in the U.K. I’ve spent over two decades in the roofing industry — in operations, in leadership, in training, in advocacy. When I first connected with National Women in Roofing USA, what struck me wasn’t the differences between our two industries. It was how profoundly similar the challenges are. 

The same barriers, the same conversations happening and also the same extraordinary resilience. The same passion. The same hunger to make the industry better. 

Our Atlantic distance as a divide, it is an opportunity. We’re facing the same challenges and we should be sharing the same solutions.

Real collaboration means picking up the phone to someone in a different country, a different specialism, a different background — and genuinely listening. It means sharing what’s worked. Being honest about what hasn’t. Asking questions without ego. Offering insight without agenda.

It means a roofing professionals on both sides of the atlatic realising they have more in common than either of them thought, and building something useful from that realisation. It means mentors sharing the knowledge it took them years to earn — freely, generously — so that the next generation doesn’t have to work as hard just to reach the starting line. It means organisations like National Women in Roofing USA and Raise the Roof in the U.K. standing together, not in competition, but in alignment — because we are working toward the same future, just from different points on the map.

That’s the version of collaboration I believe in. And National Roofing Week is the perfect moment to commit to it more deeply.

Ideas are not finite resources

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my career is that knowledge shared is notknowledge lost. It doesn’t diminish when you give it away. It multiplies.

The roofing industry has an enormous wealth of expertise sitting in the heads and hands of people who’ve spent decades in the trade. Techniques. Systems. Ways of thinking. Hard-won lessons from projects that pushed every boundary imaginable. And so much of it is never passed on.

Not out of selfishness, necessarily — but out of habit. Out of a culture that has historically treated knowledge as competitive advantage rather than collective resource. Out of the belief, sometimes unspoken, that the way we do things here is the only way worth knowing.

When we share ideas across borders — across countries, companies, generations, backgrounds — we don’t just spread good practice. We elevate it. We interrogate it. We find ways to make it better than any one of us could alone. The best innovations in any industry don’t come from isolation. They come from connection.

Breaking the barriers that are still there

It requires each of us to want more. Not just for ourselves, but for the industry as a whole. 

Want More — For All of It

This is the message I carry with me everywhere I go in this industry. It’s what Elevate Advisory and Raise the Roof were built on. It’s what I hear echoed in every conversation I have with women in roofing on both sides of the Atlantic.

Want more for your business. Want more for your people. Want more for the next generation who is watching us right now, deciding whether this is a place worth building a future.

This week why not reach out to someone you’ve never spoken to. Share something you know. Ask something you’ve been afraid to ask. Connect across the divide — of country, of specialism, of background, of experience. The roofing industry is stronger when all of us are in it, fully and unapologetically. 

Learn more about NWIR (National Women in Roofing) in their Coffee Shop Directory or visit www.nationalwomeninroofing.org.

About Kate Whatley

Kate Whatley is the founder of Elevate Roofing Advisory and co-founder of Raise the Roof, a diversity, inclusion and leadership organisation for the UK roofing and built environment sector. She has over 22 years of experience in the roofing industry and is one of the Top 100 Influential Women in Construction 2025.