Andy Passingham

Head of Fire Engineering

Andy Passingham joined Buro Happold in 2010 to lead our specialist fire engineering team. He has 20 years’ experience in multi-disciplinary design on a variety of projects, specialising in fire engineering since 1997. He has worked in London, Hong Kong and New York in both the building engineering and fire engineering disciplines.

He has built up an expansive understanding of a wide variety of sectors, projects and cultures, which has enabled him to deliver innovative and insightful solutions to fire related issues. In keeping with the Buro Happold ethos of a holistic practice he has a keen, design-led interest in the integration of architecture and engineering, which stems from completing a Masters degree in ‘Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment’ at the University of Cambridge early in his career.

His experience includes design for building services systems, with particular emphasis on fire protection systems. As a fire engineer he has developed integrated fire strategies for a wide variety of high profile projects, including fire engineering analysis, evacuation modelling and analysis of structural response to fire. He is particularly interested in improving the processes of interdisciplinary design and integration of architecture with engineering.

As Buro Happold’s global director of fire engineering Andy’s role is to strengthen and expand the fire engineering group, with particular emphasis on growing the consultancy’s USA and the Middle East based teams.