Michael Dickson, BA CEng MS FREng FIStructE FICE HonFRIBA FRSA, a founding partner of consulting engineer Buro Happold has been awarded the CBE, for services to engineering, in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Receiving the CBE is the latest achievement in Michael’s distinguished career. As chair of Buro Happold, a post he held for nine years from 1996 until relinquishing it at the end of April this year, he presided over the growth of the practice from 150 to over 960 and from 4 offices to 14. He now directs the Buro Happold Design and Technology Board, which looks after the practice’s intellectual assets in terms of product, design and service development. He also retains his role as chairman of the Happold Trust, a charity that promotes education, research and training in fields applicable to the construction industry, engineering, design, technology and architecture.
In September he will become President of the Institution of Structural Engineers.
Michael Dickson is one of the leading structural engineers in the UK and has given much to the industry. As an engineer, Michael has a remarkable list of projects for which he has been the responsible design Partner. These include the British Airways Waterside, their headquarters building at Heathrow; Wessex Waters Headquarters which received many awards for sustainable development and the Queens Building at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. International projects include the Al Faisaliah Centre for the King Faisal Foundation in Riyadh and the Japan Pavilion at Hanover Expo. Michael was also the design engineer for the competition winning proposal for the modernisation of Stuttgart 21 railway station in Germany. His contribution to these projects has included elegant and innovative structural systems. He has also concerned himself with the performance of the buildings as a whole, worrying about the comfort of the users, durability of the materials and low energy usage of the servicing systems.
He places especial value on his contribution to the Weald and Downland Museum project, the first double-layered timber gridshell to be constructed in the UK.
He has also been closely involved in the wider issues of the construction industry. In 1999 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. The following year he became chairman of the Construction Industry Council and directed the CIC’s Steering Group developing their very powerful and rigorous Design Quality Indicators for Buildings.
From 2002 until 2004 he was the chairman of nCRISP (Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel) and is particularly proud of the Pearce Report on the social and economic contribution of construction to UK plc.
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Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976 offering civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, health and safety management, infrastructure and traffic engineering, ground engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, disability design consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.
Elspeth Wales
Telephone 01225 320 600
Fax 0870 787 4148
Email Elspeth.Wales@burohappold.com
