The Business Exchange Bath & Somerset Issue 13: Autumn 2019 | Page 19

IN PROFILE
CLAIRE SMITH
PARTNER & BATH OFFICE DIRECTOR
BUROHAPPOLD
What do you love most about your job?
I love the fact that every project I work on is different.
There are new challenges every day and I feel so lucky and
privileged to work with such innovative, creative design
engineers from all over the world. My teams are passionate
about their work and really go the extra mile to create
transformative buildings and cities for our clients.
Why is being part of the Bath community
important to BuroHappold?
Sir Ted Happold started BuroHappold with a team of eight
in Bath on the 1st May 1976. He believed in the power of
collaboration, saying, “All of us are different, that’s why
we chose to be together. It is out of the different skills, the
different bodies of knowledge we have, that the quality of
what we do really comes through.” Bath has been the home
of BuroHappold for 43 years, with strong links to the city and
its people.
Why is Bath a great place to do business?
Bath may not be huge, but it is full of passionate, active
people who want to both succeed in business and support the
city that we all love. Great transport links, good connectivity,
and links to the universities all make Bath a profitable and
enjoyable place to work.
Engineering firm BuroHappold is a
great Bath success story. Its foundations
were laid in Bath in 1976 and over the
last 43 years it has become one of the
city’s biggest employers with a global
footprint. It now has offices in Asia, the
USA and Europe and employs 400 people
in Bath and 1,700 worldwide.
We met Claire Smith, the newly appointed
Bath Office Director, to find out more
about her and the business.
How did you get into engineering?
I wanted to study maths, physics and needlework at A-Level
but one of my teachers, probably wisely, persuaded me to
drop the needlework. She could see that I had a love for
science, but also that I was a pretty practical person, so
suggested engineering.
I studied at the University of Bath and first met Ted
Happold (founder of BuroHappold) in 1988. He was then
head of department in the engineering faculty. Ted was a
complete inspiration to me then, and throughout my
working life. Collaboration was key to his philosophy and
he was amazing at drawing out people’s strengths.
What are you most proud of in
your career so far?
I am extremely proud of my early work on Shakespeare’s
Globe Theatre on the Thames, as well as The Olympic
Stadium and the London Cable Car Project. In the west,
I helped to design the completed extension to St George’s
in Bristol and the Hayesfield School expansion, plus
I continue to work with B&NES on the South Quays
development. I was also project leader for the RIBA
award-winning Lakeshore project in Bristol.
How are you looking to make your mark as
Director of the Bath office?
I want to retain and strengthen our local business links
in the West Country, continue to win and complete
quality global projects and ensure that BuroHappold is a
sustainable, productive and happy place to work.
Can you give us some examples of projects
BuroHappold have worked on locally?
We are proud of the contribution we make to the ongoing
success of local businesses and organisations including
Bristol University, Wessex Water, Dyson, Westonbirt
Arboretum, Royal United Hospital, B&NES, Bath Abbey,
Monkton Combe School to name but a few, providing them
with state-of-the-art facilities and sustainable and stunning
buildings.
Looking to the future, we are excited to be located in the
heart of the new B&NES North and South Quay commercial
business district. This area of Bath is set to transform over
the next five years and as engineers for the recently started
South Quay construction, we are delighted to be a part of it!
What projects are you working
on internationally at the moment?
One of the more unusual ones is the Museum of the Future
in Dubai, a torus-shaped structure with a façade made from
Arabic poetry. In Hong Kong, we have just finished the Xiqu
Centre, a Chinese Opera House as well as Jewel Changi
airport, with its massive internal waterfall. In the US, we are
working on the restoration and repurposing of Detroit train
station and its surrounds, as well as the Academy Museum of
Motion Pictures in LA.
How do you attract talent to
BuroHappold and Bath?
BuroHappold create some of the most complex, awe-
inspiring buildings and structures in the world, from The
Louvre in Abu Dhabi, to Morpheus in Macau, and the new
Tottenham Stadium and Battersea Power Station in London.
I think those that work here would say there is a very special
collaborative culture at BuroHappold. Whatever level
you are at, your ideas will be counted, and I think people
are attracted by that. There is an agility and openness to
ideas at BuroHappold that is perhaps not present in other
engineering firms.
In the Bath office, our people also take part in lots of
‘extra-curricular’ activities; we have cricket, tag rugby,
badminton, circuits, reading groups, plogging and more!
Recently we have entered a team of amateur rowers for
the City of Bristol Rowing Club corporate regatta, taking
on other local companies such as Dyson, Mott MacDonald
and the BBC.
BuroHappold also has a Share Our Skills Programme
(SOS). This has grown from a desire across the practice
to find a way to make our skills and experience available
to those in society that are most in need yet cannot afford
commercial fees.
A recent SOS project saw a small team of graduates from
the Bath office designing a solar-powered computer lab
that is housed inside a retro-fitted shipping container for
an off-grid community in Malawi. Closer to home over two
weekends, young engineers from BuroHappold assisted a
local community-building project at St Marks Community
Centre to create a community bike shed.
How are you promoting equality in construction?
BuroHappold is built on firm foundations of diversity and
inclusivity. We are proud to be a practice that represents and
reflects the glorious variety of the world in which we live,
and we embrace diversity of experience, background and
perspective. We want to create a happy and healthy work
environment in which people can feel comfortable, knowing
that their point of view will be heard, understood, respected
and valued.
In terms of equality in construction, we recently published
a gender pay gap report, which allows us to continually
assess our aims for greater gender equality in our practice
and the wider engineering industry. We are committed to
reducing that pay gap across all levels and actively promote
careers in engineering for women in our outreach work in
schools and universities.
What is BuroHappold’s commitment to
sustainability and the green agenda?
We were amongst the first businesses to sign the Climate
and Biodiversity Emergency Declaration, an industry-wide
statement confirming our commitment to tackling the
climate emergency. It was created with the support of our
sister charity, The Happold Foundation, and aims to unite
communities of professionals in the built environment so we
can work together and accelerate meaningful change.
We are in the process of producing a radical action plan to
reduce our own emissions that we can truly deliver against.
We want to lead by example and place the climate emergency
as a key pillar of all our project work.
Our office location adjacent to Bath Spa station and the
network of cycle paths enables us to promote sustainable
commuting for staff health and wellbeing. We have a
purpose-built bike shed that holds 50 bikes and several
showers around the building.
What’s next for BuroHappold in Bath?
Last Christmas, we made our office into a giant advent
calendar for the people of Bath to enjoy! This year we are
going to go one stage further, but all will be revealed in
December…
BuroHappold is featured in a series of business profiles
created by Invest in Bath to showcase why Bath is a great
place to do business. Follow #banesbusiness on Twitter to
see the latest case study.
Turn to page 22 to see where BuroHappold appear
in our Bath Top 100 Businesses list.
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2019
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