I was keen to work abroad so when the opportunity came up to join the Auckland team, I took it. I’ve been with WSP for eight years and have been fortunate to work on some iconic projects in London, as well as Africa and the Middle East. I’ll be working on a range of public sector projects in New Zealand, including prisons, a theatre and a ferry terminal. 

One of the technical challenges I’m most looking forward to is the opportunity to develop my understanding of seismic design, including new design and analysis methods. I’ve designed for seismic zones before but New Zealand is one of the most seismically active countries in the world so it will be a much bigger part of my role here.

The sector’s understanding of how earthquakes impact buildings has developed over time. That means buildings designed 40+ years ago need analyzing and strengthening to make sure they’re robust enough to withstand seismic forces and meet changing regulations. The construction techniques used in previous decades weren’t as seismically resilient as they are now, so even a small amount of movement could cause a disproportionate amount of damage.

Strengthening existing buildings is more technically complex than building from scratch. We often don’t have the information we need to understand how buildings were originally designed and constructed and have to fill in those gaps with surveys, investigations and our experience as engineers.

In London, my understanding of seismic design was more academic. Now it’s part of my lived experience. Just recently I was on the phone to a colleague in another part of New Zealand experiencing an earthquake. He said he could feel the building swaying. That really brings home the importance of seismic design.

Around 90% of steel in the UK is recycled, but melting and reforming old steel into new steel beams is still energy and carbon intensive. Audrey McIver’s team in London developed a tool that matched reused steel sections from a stockist with steel sections in our designs, based on size, strength and optimizing steel reuse. It helped us substitute 26% of the steel required on the Elephant & Castle Town Centre scheme with reused steel, saving the project 160 tonnes of embodied carbon.

Now we’re developing a more advanced version of the tool which will automatically generate hundreds of possible designs using only reused steel and score them to create a shortlist of the best options. The designs can be scored using different criteria, such as how well they meet the design team’s architectural vision, and how efficiently they reuse steel. There could be thousands of different design possibilities so the ability to assess and identify the best ones is key. The potential of digital tools to help us reuse existing materials is incredible.

During my time in London, I developed a network of industry experts I could talk to including my mentors, Diego Padilla-Philipps and Nello Petrioli who taught me so much, and Ross Harvey and Andrew Pratt who developed my passion for parametric design. That makes you feel capable as an engineer and confident to tell clients, don’t worry, we’ll sort it.

Diego and Nello also helped foster a great culture of collaboration where you can debate, challenge and bounce ideas around. That way of working is really important to me and I’m looking forward to doing the same with my new team in New Zealand.

To me, a place is somewhere you want to stop and spend time, not just pass through. I love places that bring people together and enable us to connect – like street food markets and coffee shops. Moving from London to Auckland has helped me reflect on what makes each city great. I’ve not been in New Zealand for long though, so for now, I’d have to say my favorite place is sitting outside a nice pub by the River Thames in London on a warm summer’s evening. You can’t beat the atmosphere and the buzz.