About Us
Personal Design Influences
- Design experience in construction has accumulated since 1971 starting with design of steelwork frames for industrial units.
- This followed four years in aeronautical engineering. During that time, I was lucky enough to be based in the Hawker Siddeley factory at Woodford UK and able to see the Vulcan being refurbished and flown.
- Much of the approach to quality control and attention to detail has flowed from those years. 99.9% accuracy in aeronautical design is a serious failure.
- Fail Safe is an aeronautically influenced design principle where failure of one small item, e.g., a rivet, does not become a catastrophic failure. This is now creeping into the construction industry with stability requirements under partial collapse. I have used the principle for such things as piled foundations for many years.
- The second large influence was changing direction from art to engineering. The church extension shown on the home page was designed by me and built by my son. See link on Useful links page.