Our philosophy for historic buildings is that you must first understand the original construction. Until you have achieved that, you cannot design alterations or solve problems in a way which will be sympathetic to the original construction.

Our knowledge of historic construction techniques and materials together with our knowledge of sources enables us to understand existing buildings of all ages.

Andrew Dutton is a member of the Conservation Accreditation Register for Engineers. See http://www.careregister.org.uk/.

The London Custom House

For this historic building we felt confident that if we could find the original drawings we would be able to demonstrate that the floors which were a combination of timber joist, fire proof plates and cast iron beams could be shown to have sufficient load carrying capacity for modern office loading.

The previous engineers had recommended major alterations to strengthen the floors which would have resulted in considerable loss of historic fabric. We employed an archivist, who after an exhaustive search managed to locate the original drawings which included the proof loads applied to the cast iron beams as part of the manufacturing process. By this means the disturbance to the floors was minimised.

Waterloo Station Offices

Waterloo Station Offices were constructed from 1910 to 1919 as purpose built offices but were no longer suitable for current day use.

We provided structural engineering support for a major refurbishment contract involving constructing six major cores for lifts, stairs and services as well as floor strengthening.

Many of the floors contained fragile Frazzi fireproof tiles which made it very difficult to fix services.

Palace of Westminster

Over the last eight years we have provided structural engineering advice on a number of refurbishment and new construction projects at the Palace of Westminster:

Refurbishment of the roof of the House of Lords; Strengthening of the ceiling of the Royal Chamber; Refurbishment of Royal Court facades and roof;
New basement for Peers Court.

We believe that we were first appointed for this work due to our understanding of the structural principles of the old buildings and our sympathetic solutions.

Victoria & Albert Museum Roofs

Hurst Peirce + Malcolm were commissioned to carry out a detailed survey of all 57 different roof types to the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The purpose of the survey was to determine the condition of each roof and to prepare a long term strategy for the roofs.

The report took the form of an interactive document allowing sorting in accordance with age and life expectancy and hyperlinking to photographs.