David Hull, Buro Happold principal and building services expert to retire after twenty year’s service

28/10/2011 No comments

International engineering consultancy celebrates Hull’s contribution to the practice

Renowned building services expert David Hull is to retire from international multidisciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold, following more than twenty years of exemplary service.

A graduate of Newcastle University, David joined Buro Happold in 1991 and became a principal in the practice in 1997. Since then he has delivered a wide selection of inspirational projects during his career at Buro Happold including Leeds City Museum, The Lowry Centre, and the London 2012 Olympic Park Energy Strategy amongst others. His approach to work is infectious and he has been a leading light in exemplifying the consultancy’s practice-wide values of care, elegance and value.

With a reputation for a great sense of humour and an inexhaustible dedication to his work, David has tirelessly pursued the delivery of engineering excellence across the world, writing a building services design guide to share best practice advice to other engineers. In addition he is recognised as a great mentor and an excellent example to the many young engineers in Buro Happold and indeed throughout the industry.

Buro Happold’s senior partner Mike Cook says, “On behalf of all the partners in Buro Happold we would like to take this opportunity to recognise the contribution David has made to our practice and the partnership. Although it is with regret that we say goodbye to an excellent engineer, colleague and friend, we wish him every success in the future in his chosen endeavours.”

Gavin Thompson, Buro Happold Chairman added, “I have been hugely lucky to have had a fantastic range of mentors during my own career at Buro Happold and I am fortunate to be able to count our founder Ted Happold as one of them. But specifically in my own field of building services engineering Ted selected some very strong influencers. If I am ever in need of deep technical advice I will always turn to Dave Hull.

“Dave was my boss when I worked in our Leeds office in the early nineties and if I were asked to describe him I would say he uses his mastery of our craft to wrestle the internal environment into submission and have it respond to his every command! The sheer depth of his practical and theoretical knowledge coupled with a tenacious desire to make things work as they should is infectious. He has sought to share this knowledge far and wide within our practice by establishing a ground breaking and highly popular technical training programme for building services engineers - a fitting legacy!

“As partners we are a restless bunch who seek to continually explore, and in Dave's case, he has chosen to explore fields beyond Buro Happold. Others will follow behind him to fill the gap he leaves, and while none of us are foolish enough to feel we are indispensible, for that is the very strength of our partnership, I will sorely miss Dave as one of my partners. However, he doesn't escape that easily as we will no doubt continue to seek his advice and counsel for many years to come!”

David leaves Buro Happold with a wealth of good wishes for the future from both the practice and from clients, as he moves on to take up new challenges both within and outside the construction industry.