Poetry In Urban Infrastructure
Abstract
Civic Engineers are involved in the design and delivery of urban infrastructure across the country, we are a team of highly motivated professional engineers who care about the quality of people’s lives and the communities within which we all live. Our engineering services include civil and structural engineering design and consultancy advice on building structures, public realm, infrastructure, movement and sustainability. This involves much more than just technical ability. It involves listening, researching, learning, understanding, questioning, discussing, documenting, designing, managing, communicating, illustrating, forecasting and implementing.
Our objective is to enhance the quality of people's lives in the built environment in ways which work within the sensible limitations of the natural environment; resilience not rigidity; exploring not exploiting; reusing not just using; civility as well as civil engineering. We like to get to know the places in which we work and the people with whom we work; clients, collaborators and other team members. Working with people who share all or some of our core values and who are generally interested in the bigger picture is essential in realising the best results. From this experience we know that good value can only reliably be achieved by good design, which incorporates green and blue infrastructure into the landscape from first principles.
We would like to share with you the impact this approach has had on a number of our projects, ranging over lessons learned and discussing how this experience can inform and refine other projects.
Biography
Stephen is a civil engineer with 20 years’ experience in practice and is a founding director of engineering consultants Civic Engineers. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Member of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transport.
Stephen has been involved in the development of a broad range of urban infrastructure projects across the country, employing place-led engineering techniques to positively transform the environmental quality of our neighbourhoods.
Through this work he has been appointed as a Built Environment Expert with Design Council Cabe, a member of the Greater London Authority’s Specialist Assistance Team and a panelist on the Architecture and Design Scotland forum He is also a regular contributor to Tree Design Action Group.