Associate Facade Engineer

Job description / Role

Buro Happold's Hong Kong office is growing significantly following continued successes in the Asia Pacific Region. We have built the team with some talented engineers from across the Practice's global offices and who have been joined by some of Hong Kong's most talented engineers. After first establishing our Facades group in the Hong Kong office towards the start of 2010, we are now in a strong position to grow the team further and offer talented individuals an opportunity to join the team and be part of what is a very exciting period in the development of our Asia Pacific business.

Job Purpose:

This role represents an important development from one exclusively responsible for technical engineering and design work into one that starts to take on the wider issues of business and people management.

Associates will typically take responsibility for management of people, client and commercial issues as required by the Project Leader role. In this capacity you will represent Buro Happold internally and externally on behalf of your Group.

Person Specification:

An Associate must be able to demonstrate a good standard of capability across most, and a developing standard of capability across the remaining Buro Happold Core Competencies – Creativity, Customer Focus, Collaboration and Teamwork, Commercial Focus, Technical Knowledge and Development and Leadership.

We are seeking someone with good English, who is capable of writing concise, clear reports. Ideally the right candidate will also be fluent in Cantonese or Mandarin.

Key Responsibilities:

Project Management:

• Lead facade discipline projects on behalf of the group (operating as Job or Project Leader as appropriate), taking ownership for sustained and productive client relationships.
• In charge of multiple projects across the group, taking responsibility for the engineering solutions while ensuring financial success.
• Delivering a risk managed portfolio; working within agreed capital lock up parameters.
• Reviews job financial performance and adjust resources accordingly

Business Development:

• Actively seeks new work from existing clients
• Supporting the group’s marketing goals and plan
• Develop own Client relationships and secure repeat work where possible, with overall participation of the Group Director
• Dynamic focus on developing / maintaining business relationship with international architects and other clients in the region.
• Prepare Financial and Technical proposals

Team Leadership:

• Runs a team of people within the Group (mainly junior engineers and CAD Technicians)
• Guiding the lower level team members in order to achieve the project success.
• Support delivery of the team’s Performance and Development Review process.

Technical Leadership:

• Prepare Technical Specifications and check work/specifications of subordinates
• Undertake high-level project technical/quality reviews and attend design workshops for projects relevant to experience across the practice, undertake site visits as needed for the smooth operation of the project
• Contribute to BH-wide initiatives with respect to technical development / market sectors and processes.
• Ensuring ‘design rigor’ is delivered on their projects, and in particular ensuring design QA processes are fully planned and implemented.

Requirements

Essential Experience:

• Experienced technical leader; track record of exceptional delivery over a sustained period within the industry.
• Must have worked on international projects.
• Designing in at least three of the following materials: aluminium, steel, stone, glass and timber.
• Knowledge of weather performance issues.
• Architectural component detail design including aesthetics.
• Knowledge of building physics including ventilation, solar gain control, thermal insulation and glare control.
• Knowledge of various materials and its finishes in this industry and their corresponding performance / application under different environmental conditions.
• Knowledge of typical cladding systems.
• Experienced in computer modelling.

Desirable Experience:

• Experience in the Asia Pacific Region.
• Secondary structure design.
• Glass structural design.
• Experience of the practical aspects of handling and fabricating typical cladding materials.
• Good awareness of the problems and constraints of the other major design disciplines such as Architectural, Structures, Services, Fire Engineering, and Acoustics etc.
• Involvement in business development.
• Involvement with Academic Institutes.

Qualifications:

• First Degree in Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Architecture.
• Significant experience in the façade industry as a team leader, project leader and ideally with involvement in business development.

About the Company

Described by our clients as passionate, innovative, collaborative: BuroHappold Engineering is an independent, international engineering practice that over the last 40 years has become synonymous with the delivery of creative, value led building and city solutions for an ever changing world. Having worked on every continent, our clients include more than 90% of the worlds leading architectural practices and we have collaborated with global organisations such as the United Nations, The World Bank and UNESCO. Through our global community of driven, world leading engineering professionals we deliver elegant solutions for buildings and cities that seek to address the major problems facing societies today.

As an organisation we strive for progress and are committed to finding new and better ways to deliver elegant solutions. We recognise that this can only happen if our people can keep up with, create and implement the latest developments in technology and ideas. We offer learning and development opportunities at every level, to help shape exciting and personally satisfying careers and ensure our engineers stay at the cutting edge of industry thought.