Judges
Winners are selected by some of the industry's finest structural engineers
Professor David A Nethercot - Chairman of the Structural Awards Judging Panel
Professor David A Nethercot is Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London. David was previously on the staff at Cardiff, Sheffield and Nottingham Universities, including 5 years as Head of Department at Nottingham.
He was for more than 10 years, chairman of the BSI Committee responsible for BS5950 and for UK input into EC3, is Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Steel Construction Institute and a Vice-President of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering.
David is a past president of the Institution, is Chairman of the Structural Awards judging panel and won the Institution’s Gold Medal Award in 2009.
Mr Mike Banfi
Mr Mike Banfi is an Associate Director who joined Ove Arup & Partners in 1976. Since 1998 has been based in Arup's Advanced Technology and Research department.
Mike advises on analysis and design of structures and his particular interest is steel and steel composite structures but he has experience in concrete and timber. He also contributes to codes of practice at UK and European level.
Mike has advised on aspects of steel construction for many high-profile projects including The Leadenhall Building, the London Aquatics Centre and Dublin Terminal 2.
He is an active member of the Institution and currently chairs the Institution’s Research Panel.
Mr Gordon Clark
Mr Gordon Clark is a Director at Ramboll and is past Chairman of the independent engineering consultant Gifford (now part of Ramboll). He joined the consultancy in 1976 and was appointed a Director in 1992.
Gordon's career as a leading bridge designer included Project Director for the award-winning Gateshead Millennium Bridge.
Lecturing widely and publishing many papers on bridges and other built structures, Gordon has made a major contribution to the advance of technical knowledge and standards throughout the industry.
Gordon is Deputy President of the International Federation for Structural Concrete (fib), chairman of the British Standards Structural Concrete committee and is a non-executive Board member of CARES, the Certification Authority for Reinforcing Steels.
Dr Michael Cook
Dr Michael Cook is Senior Partner and Chairman of Buro Happold. During his career he has led the engineering design of many unique structures around the world, and contributed to the development of a practice of consulting engineers with a global reputation for creativity and innovation.
Michael is currently Chairman of TRADA and chairs the Institution's Education Panel. He was awarded the IABSE Milne Medal in 2009 and became a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010. He is Adjunct Professor of Creative Design at Imperial College.
Recently completed building projects include the Bob Cogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington and the Kahn Shatyr Entertainment Centre in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Dr Steve Denton
Dr Steve Denton is Director of Engineering at Parsons Brinckerhoff and heads PB’s Technical Leadership Team. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Bath.
He joined PB as a graduate engineer in 1992, and has been with the company ever since, with periods seconded to work with a major contractor and for three years as a Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge University.
His interests and experience span many facets of strategic and engineering consultancy, research and construction. In addition to his business and project leadership responsibilities, he retains a high degree of technical involvement in projects, with particular interests in the analysis and design of bridges.
Steve sits on numerous national and international committees and steering groups. He has published extensively and is regularly invited to speak at international conferences.
He has been heavily involved in the development of design standards, and is a member of BSi committees B/525, B/525/10 and B/526. He is also a member of CEN/TC 250 and chairs CEN/TC 250 HG-Bridges, the international committee with responsibilities for the bridge design provisions of the Eurocodes.
Mr Ian Firth
Mr Ian Firth is Director of Flint & Neill and is responsible for the designs, checks and structural assessment of bridge projects, large and small, around the world.
He is well known as a designer of several innovative and award winning bridges such as the Bridge of Aspiration for the Royal Ballet School in London and the Sail Bridge in Swansea, and the concept designer for the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong
Mr Tristram Hope
Mr Tristram Hope has an Architectural Engineering Masters joint degree from the University of Leeds and Pennsylvania State University. He has 23 years’ experience in structural and multi-disciplinary building engineering design across a wide range of projects both in the UK and internationally.
He is the founder and Chairman of independent construction consultancy THiSolutions Ltd, with particular expertise in sustainable design, having worked previously with Arup, Buro Happold, Andrew Russell Associates and Building Design Partnership.
He is the Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in Engineering Design and Sustainability for the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds and a founder member of the Construction Industry Council regional branch for Yorkshire and the Humber.
Mr Tim MacFarlane
Tim Macfarlane is a partner of Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners which was founded in 1985. He has been responsible for the design of a number of award winning building structures and has taken a particular interest in the development of glass as a structural material.
He set up the American office of Dewhurst Macfarlane in 1998 and was responsible for the structural design of the Kimmel Centre and the Pittsburgh Convention Centre He is currently a member of the group tasked with updating the Institute of Engineers handbook on the use of structural glass first published in 1999.
Teaching structural engineering to architectural students has been a continuous activity since 1982 and he is currently a visiting professor at Nottingham University.
In 2005 he was elected as a Royal Designer for Industry and is an honorary Fellow of the RIBA and the RIAS.
Mr John Nolan
John Nolan began his career in the industry as a labourer, graduated from Lanchester Polytechnic in 1974 and obtained a Masters from Warwick University in 1978.
A Chartered Engineer who has worked as a labourer, contractor’s engineer, consulting engineer, business owner, property developer and client
His previous experience includes RM Douglas Construction, Farebrother and Partners (Associate) Cameron Taylor (Director) and is currently Chairman of Nolan Associates Consulting Engineers which he co-founded in 1993.
Dr Graham Owens
Dr Graham Owens the 2009 President of the Institution of Structural Engineers, has 44 years experience in structural and civil engineering, working in the contracting, consulting, academic and institutional sectors.
As Director of The Steel Construction Institute (SCI) until his retirement in 2009, he was responsible for the technical quality and commercial viability of an organisation of 50 people with an annual turnover of £5m, which undertook approximately 100 separate pieces of technical work each year to promote and develop the proper and effective use of steel in construction.
In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is currently a Member of Council of the Institution of Structural Engineers.
Mr Sam Price
Mr Sam Price founded Price & Myers with Robert Myers in 1978. A succession of many noteworthy projects included the Sutton Hoo visitor centre for the National Trust with van Heyningen and Haward and a large new office for Capital One in Nottingham with ORMS, two of the largest in a group of Price & Myers projects that won RIBA or Civic Trust awards.
Sam is currently chairman of the Steering Committee of the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment Course at Cambridge; is on the Advisory Committee for the Department of Architecture at Cambridge University; and he is a member of the Architectural Panel of the National Trust.
Ms Claire Thomas
Ms Claire Thomas is Associate Director at Ramboll. She is currently leading a major redevelopment at Oxford Brookes University centred around the provision of a New Library and Teaching Building and a prestigious, geometrically complex apartment building on a archaeologically significant site neighbouring the Tower of London. Other recently completed projects include the St David’s 2 retail centre in Cardiff.
Smaller projects feature strongly too in the form of super-insulated timber frames and cross-laminated timber structures for schools. Claire has also been exploring her Scandinavian colleagues’ approach to school building to meet strict environmental targets.
Such diverse projects are typical of her portfolio which also includes regeneration and remediation, refurbishment, health centres, sports halls, swimming pools and speculative offices.
Claire particularly relishes the challenge of working within a multi-disciplinary environment and bringing her holistic sustainable approach into the mainstream.
Miss Georgina Wong
Miss Georgina Wong is a Chartered Member of both the ICE and the IStructE. Currently practising as a Contract Structural Engineer, she has previously worked for Jacobs and Arup on a wide variety of architectural-led new build and refurbishment projects in the retail, residential and commercial sectors. With a developing interest in sustainable design, Georgina is also a qualified BREEAM Healthcare Assessor.
She continues to provide guidance and leadership to a student-led development project in Uganda, of which she was a founder member during the final year of her degree awarded by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. As a former Chair of the Yorkshire Branch Young Members Group, she welcomes the opportunity to represent the views of young members of the Institution on the Judging Panel.