Delivering Engineering Excellence

At concept, if you can. Grid, spans and stability strategy are cheap to change on a sketch and expensive to change once the architecture is fixed. We have taken projects on at tender stage too, and the work then is mostly proving what is already drawn can be built.

No. Precast is what we know best, but the structural design covers in situ concrete, steel and the hybrid frames most jobs actually end up being. We pick the system that suits the programme, not the one that suits us.

We do, for the elements in our scope, under a signed appointment with professional indemnity behind it. Interfaces with other designers are set out in a responsibility matrix at the start, so no connection ends up belonging to nobody.

That is usually the constraint we design around. We sequence drawings to the erection order rather than by element type, so the first deliveries can be cast while the upper levels are still being detailed.

Architectural plans and sections, a site investigation report, and whatever you have on services and loading. If the site investigation is not back yet we can start on the superstructure and pick up foundations later.

Yes, and the clash detection with them. We model the frame with services routed through it, so conflicts are resolved on screen rather than found by a crew with a core drill.

They are designed in rather than argued about afterwards. Connections are detailed with the adjustment the trade actually needs, and the written sequence for standing the frame says what has to be checked before the crane leaves.

It scales with the frame, not the project value. Most jobs are a fixed fee against a defined deliverables list, with a rate for the changes every live project produces. We come back inside two working days, and the written fee proposal follows within three working days of that.