Engineering Services
Historic Buildings
The Practice has a wide range of experience providing conservation engineering advice and design services on a wide range of historic buildings and scheduled monuments. Much of this work is currently associated with parish churches, many of which are listed buildings.
A challenge with many Heritage Assets is finding a new and creative use to extend their useful life. It goes to the heart of what building conservation is for buildings that have become unloved: finding a new use that respects its architectural and historic context whilst being viable financially.
The conservation engineering expertise of the practice can help find appropriate and sensitive solutions that can provide real opportunities to deliver something unique and a real asset for building owners and society as a whole.
Structural Condition Surveys & Appraisals
The Practice carries out structural appraisals on a whole range of building types and ages. This is built around the significant amount of knowledge and experience the Practice has gained, and the advice aims to adopt sensible conservation-based engineering approaches which are sympathetic and appropriate to existing buildings.
A flexible approach is adopted to cater for the client’s needs, and advice is provided through initial surveys and Engineering Notes or more detailed Structural Reports.
These services include pre-acquisition or selling reports and advising of structural movement, decay and other forms of structural damage.
Structural Engineering Design
The Practice provides structural engineering design services on many domestic-scale projects, from localised alterations and extensions to new bespoke houses.
These projects cover both domestic properties and commercial premises, in addition to numerous vernacular buildings and churches.
Often the key to successful designs is to find solutions that work with the grain of the existing building so that alterations limit their impact on the building structure. Such approaches are also far better for listed buildings as they help respect and protect the architectural and historic importance of listed buildings.
Valuing our Vernacular
Vernacular buildings arguably form some of our most cherished buildings, built using local skills and materials, often before the Industrial Revolution, and which blend naturally into the landscape.
They can also be more challenging to the engineer as they tend to be more crude in their construction. Without the necessary skills and knowledge, structural work to such buildings can often end up being heavy-handed and expensive.
The Practice has a wide range of experience dealing with the sensitive repair and conservation of numerous barns, oast houses and humbler domestic properties. The engineering of such buildings should adopt the spirit of the original vernacular style whilst developing robust but sympathetic insertions to maintain the historic character of the building.