Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
'Thrive in Construction' is the only podcast that delves into the personal journeys of sustainability leaders and innovators in the construction industry across the UK. Our show differentiates by offering unscripted, passion-fueled conversations that go beyond the buzzwords to the heart of what's driving the industry forward. It's tailored for aspiring professionals, seasoned experts, and anyone with a keen interest in the sustainable evolution of construction. We're here at a time when the call for sustainable development is not just a trend, but a societal imperative, empowering listeners to build a career that contributes to a greener future.
Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
Ep. 69 ‘The Future Engineer Will Be a Creative Thinker, Not Just a Calculator’ – The New Role of Engineers
In this episode of Thrive in Construction, Darren is joined by James Norman, a structural engineer, author, and educator passionate about shaping the future of the industry. James discusses his transition from working in industry to teaching, highlighting the autonomy and influence he now enjoys in mentoring the next generation of engineers.
James dives into the future of structural engineering, sharing insights on the rise of automation in standardised design and the evolving role of engineers to focus more on buildability and creative material experimentation. He also talks about his latest book, Feature Structural Design, which explores how engineers can push the boundaries of traditional design and make a positive impact on the built environment.
Key topics covered in this episode include:
The future of structural engineering and how automation will change the role of engineers
James Norman’s journey from industry to teaching and the influence of education
Regenerative design and sustainability with natural materials like straw, bamboo, and hemp
Overcoming over-engineering and the importance of designing with efficiency and sustainability in mind
The impact of feedback from students and readers in shaping James' work
Creating systems change in construction through small, consistent actions
Mental health in the construction industry and the importance of supporting professionals for long-term success
Links:
James LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-lecturer/
James Book -The Regenerative Structural Engineer: https://www.istructe.org/resources/guidance/the-regenerative-structural-engineer/
Darren Evans Consultancy: https://darren-evans.co.uk/
Darren: https://darrenevans.komi.io/
The next episodes of Thriving Construction come straight from FutureBuild. Huge thanks to EcoCocoon. The space was great for chats, acoustics and, even better, well-being.
Speaker 2:When I worked in industry, I used to love showing my family the buildings I'd worked on, because there's like this real proud moment right Of, like here's a building that I designed and now you can see it. Yeah, and now I'm starting to get to that point where I'm seeing my students who've graduated and got on to do incredible things, and I feel like I have the same sort of proud moments, like here's a people that I've had a little bit of influence over, who have gone on to do remarkable things, you know, and some of them have done really incredible things.
Speaker 1:I love that. I'm interested as well in the in the books. Yeah, you've written. How many have you published and what is it you're working on at the moment?
Speaker 2:I've written six um, so I've literally I was really hoping one would come out today, but it's not going to come out until monday. So the the latest one is called the future of structural design and it comes out on monday hopefully, um, and it's about where structural engineering could go next. So I'm seeing it as a piece of possibilism. So it's like helping engineers to create the imagination, infrastructure, to imagine what it is they could be doing in the future. So I think the reality is we're going to see more automation, of sort of standardized design, like anything that you can do with a spreadsheet now will be automated more and more going forward in the future.
Speaker 2:Anything that's codified now, I assume, will become standardized in the future and therefore the role of the engineer hopefully will shift from someone who just sits down and, you know, produces loads of calcs to someone who is thinking about buildability. They are playing with materials, they're doing physical testing material. So this, this lovely little pavilion that we're sat in, you know, someone would need to understand the racking behavior of these panels. You can't do that with a computer or with some sort of automated process. You actually need to physically test it. Um, as we move much more into reuse of existing buildings. We need to understand how our existing buildings are performing, how we can uh intervene to improve their performance, all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:So I see that the future engineer will have a much more I don't know like when I thought about being an engineer as a child I I think I thought it was going to be much more like, you know, mad professor in a garage playing with stuff, building stuff, you know kind of pushing it, pulling it, and also I thought it was going to be much more mathematically intense, and I think most stuff now is not that mathematically hard if you're kind of reasonably fluent in maths. And it's also not particularly practical, you're just kind of following process. So I thought it could be really exciting.
Speaker 1:I love that. The other thing that I've, just as you were speaking now, I'm just wondering about is is the impact that the books have on people. So you've made reference to you loving the job and the role that you're in at the moment and seeing these graduates go on to do significant, great things because of the influence of the impact that you've had. Yeah, so I think it's the same with the books that you're writing. Um, and I'm just wondering have you had that feedback loop come back with reference to the books that you write, to say, actually, james, the, the book that you have written here, or these collection of books, have really helped me to clarify something so that I've been able to do this and I'm really proud of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the nicest moments is when someone messages me on LinkedIn and says I've just finished reading your book, or or I read your book 10 years ago and I'm still applying that. That's a massive win, you know. To know that someone has kind of taken my work and run with it and tried to have a go with it and seen what they can do with it. That feels really, really positive, yeah, really exciting. So I have, but I don't think, um, we as people are particularly good at providing that feedback. Necessarily, um, and the last thing anyone wants to do is send out continuous like questionnaires, because I don't know about you, but every, I mean I'm sure after this event, I'll get a questionnaire about how was the event? Um, and we're continuously bombarded with people wanting kind of like this meaningless feedback, you know, out of one to five, whereas I think what we don't get much of, and and, and we all including myself, although I did this just the other day with a, a company I wrote them an email. I was asking a question about something. They came back to me and then I went back to them and I answered their questions, but I was like, look, your questions are quite narrow. My answer to your questions is such that your product looks worse than the product you've asked me to compare it to. But the reality is your product I use on a daily basis and theirs I don't. And it's because you haven't asked me to kind of comment on my entire experience. I think there's like a richness and feedback that is missing in when you. I think we could, all you know, support each other with positive feedback in that way. So I love it when I get feedback on my books and I really love it actually when people tell me like what is missing. I'm always keen to think about how could this be better?
Speaker 2:So Conceptual Design of Buildings, which is a book I produced four years ago for the Institution of Structure Engineers. It basically takes you through the whole conceptual design process for steel buildings, concrete buildings, timber buildings. It's now five years old. I feel like it needs a version two. I already know the version two should cover more materials. It should think about um, embodied carbon from the off, like how do we talk around body carbon at the very beginning of the design process? Like we kind of talked about it a little bit but we didn't provide anything like enough, because the conversations move forward in those five years.
Speaker 2:I would love to know where it's working, where it's not working, where like am I to? Am I reinforcing the status quo? Like structural engineers in early design generally over-design because they're worried that things are going to change and they don't want to like massively, like, go, oh well, now you've changed it, I've got to redesign everything. So they tend to add a bit of extra capacity yeah, but have we gone too far in that direction? Should we be challenging engineers more to design to the bone from the off and make it clear look, if you're going to change things, things will get bigger. Like, rather than saying, oh yeah, it's fine, we can manage that. Basically, when they say it's fine, we can manage that they've overestimated at the beginning.
Speaker 2:So, like I'm wondering are there cultural shifts that we are not yet capturing, which we should be capturing through that? But and if people tell me, if, if people give me feedback, then that's really, really helpful. But I was saying to my students about my unit, I was asking them for some feedback. I said, if you only tell me about the negative things, I will change it, just in response to the negative. So it's kind of the opposite things as well, because if one person says they don't like this and three people say they do like it as it is, then do like it as it is. Then I know it's good as it is, rather than assuming that it's rubbish, because what the only feedback I get is negative.
Speaker 1:So just within that, and you're talking about the culture, do you mean the culture within the uk or do you mean western culture? And specifically to do with the over engineering of um of our structures?
Speaker 2:yeah, I would find it hard to comment beyond the uk in terms of my own personal experience. So so the projects I've worked on went so I worked in industry for about 15 years. All but one of my projects was uk-based. I've worked only with uk design practices. I did work for ramble, who are danish, but they were. I worked for whippy bird, who was bought by ramble, so the culture was very much the whippy bird culture. So my experience is very much the UK culture and I left industry 15 years ago.
Speaker 2:Now I've tried to stay really well connected. I have loads of friends. In fact, possibly I'm better connected with structural engineers since I left because my networking has gone from. I don't want to talk to structural engineers because they're the competitor to. I really want to talk to structural engineers because I want to work with them and you know, I want to tell them about how good my graduates are and I want to hear about job opportunities and I want to find out what's going on in the industry and make sure I'm up to date. So my perspective is probably quite uk focused. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if it was true, uh, elsewhere, but I I couldn't comment on that vicious right, okay so you're here today at future build and are you um a part of a panel or you, yeah, speaking?
Speaker 2:so I'm running a panel on natural building materials, uh, structural materials, and so I'm talking about. I'm talking about something called regenerative design, which is how to think about design that goes beyond do no harm, and it's not just about the climate emergency, so it's not just about using materials that sequester carbon and reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. It's thinking about how do we do that in a way that reduces carbon in the atmosphere but increases biodiversity and increases human flourishing, increases biodiversity and increases human flourishing. So, um, this, I really like straw bales, though we're sat in a space full of straw bales, so straw bale is an example of how you might do that. So how would you create a supply chain? And, as a structural engineer, I think we're really poor understanding our supply chains and we need to get better. But how do we create supply chain which is sequestering carbon? Which straw does increase in biodiversity? So that would depend on the farming techniques that are being used for that particular straw, but we could ask that question and try and find out and then start to specify materials that fit within particular uh agricultural practices and create flourishing communities, so we could then start to think about what goes on at the point of um, where the thing is being grown, how's it harvested? What's the impact on the community? What type of labor do they utilize? How do we enable that supply chain to increase its value? Like straw is a waste material. It has very little value. If it becomes a construction product, its value goes up quite a lot. If we increase the value of the product, it means that they can, you know, kind of uh, pay people more money to do the work. So how can we create these positive supply chains which are good for us because they create great buildings which function well, that have good insulation properties, but are also good for the planet and for the communities along the supply chain? So that's, that's the the kind of the regenerative design bit, and I think most of my thoughts. It's not that you can't do it with other materials, but I think it's easiest to see how you can do it with renewable materials. So timber, straw, bamboo, using materials like hemp, sheave, so yeah, those kinds of materials. It's just much easier to conceptualize what that could look like, and that's what I'll be talking about for 10 minutes and then we're gonna have someone talking about um.
Speaker 2:Certification sounds really boring, but I think quality assurance is actually massively important. It's massively important because we need things to be safe, we need them to be done properly, and I think when you go off piste, when you design something that is different to the norm, people are kind of expecting it to fail and want it. Maybe don't. Maybe they don't want it to fail, but you know, like I feel like there's lots and want it. Maybe don't, maybe they don't want it to fail, but you know, like I feel like there's lots of doubters who don't expect these things to succeed. So quality, assuring your work meticulously and making sure it is successful is really key. And then the third speaker is talking about bamboo, specifically in designing with bamboo, which is an area I've got a small interest in in. In fact, me and a third speaker supervised a PhD student together looking at bamboo connections. So yeah, so we're talking about kind of different aspects of natural building materials.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so if this is your passion, it sounds like the way that you're speaking about it, yeah, I think my real passion is just changing industry.
Speaker 2:The more I thought about it, I think that's where it sits. I could industry, uh, the more I thought about it, I think that's that's where it sits. I um, I could talk to you passionately about concrete. I actually love concrete, like most of the buildings I designed were designed out of concrete.
Speaker 2:My challenge with concrete is I am at the moment and maybe there are people here who can help me I'm at the moment struggling to see how concrete goes beyond, do no harm within the current context. So then we could change the context. We could do some some things to think much more about the supply chain of things like sand and aggregate. We could think about the water we're using. We could think about the way we process and create cement.
Speaker 2:I um, you did a chat I think a few well, it was probably a while ago, but I found it on your the tube with someone who was looking at magnesium-based cement to make low-carbon or zero-carbon concrete. I think you know we could be having those conversations. I just think the infrastructure in terms of the real infrastructure and also the sort of the mental infrastructure to imagine what that might look like I think it's harder to get there, I feel with growing materials can. So I think I'm passionate about change generally. It's just at the moment natural building materials, it, it. It feels like it's lower hanging fruit if that makes sense, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? But just going back to that podcast, it is with a guy called barney shanks. Yeah, I loved it, yeah, and and the interesting thing I don't know if he picked up on this was that he said that the technology is already there to do that and he's taken it to the big cement. Boys, yeah, and girls yeah, but they're not interested.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because their current system works really well for them. Yeah, of course it does, and they don't want to break the status quo. Yeah, of course they didn't say it in those words. Yeah, yeah, that's effectively the reason why his thing is not being used at scale.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course and I think that's part of the thing about regenerative design is thinking about systems change and how we create systems change and, as engineers, our role and architects and other people in the bill environment. We need to understand the impact we can have and the agency we carry. So I think the most exciting thing at the moment about a design project is the specifications, and it's exciting because no one ever cares about the specifications like they are the thing that get done last, they get done in a rush, but they are absolutely full of opportunity to change the way we do business. So at the moment, the way that we produce cement works for the cement companies, but our specifications aren't challenging our cement companies to think differently and actually we're not even at the point where we know what questions we should be asking of our cement companies.
Speaker 1:So I feel like there is the opportunity, but we've got to be agents of change and I think that that's the thing is that unless you ask a high level question, you're never going to get a high level answer Correct. You're aware enough to be asking or thinking about what different questions can I ask. Then that question is not even going to get, not even going to get tabled. Yeah, and that's kind of the way that it feels at the moment is that there's so many people that are around that know that they want something different. Yes, so they don't know what question to ask. Yes, and the organizations that can make the change aren't interested in the questions because they are just wanting to keep the status quo, because that's where that value or money transaction goes on with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, although that's true for them right now, right, but if the world changes, their models may not work so well. So what?
Speaker 1:is it that, because I'm with you, there will be change, or there could be change, or the hope is that there will be change? Yeah, but when you talk about the world changing or things changing, is that what is it that's going to change and what is it that we can do to try and expedite that change? It's a great question.
Speaker 2:So I think the best example that I personally know of of the change is around embodied carbon. So I I joined industry in 2000. At that point, embodied carbon was a non-issue people weren't talking about. In fact, I remember when I worked in industry probably between all the way from 2000 to 2015 I was told embodied carbon is a non-issue and mechanical electrical engineers are basically sustainable engineers like you. As a structural engineer, you have nothing to do with sustainability, just make sure our building doesn't fall over. That's all we care about. And partly that was because other like because operational carbon at the time was significantly higher. So it was correct, but partly, I think there was. Also we weren't advocating for ourselves in terms of what we could do, and also we thought it was too hard to calculate the embodied carbon. That was the message that was out.
Speaker 2:But then what happened is a few people started actually doing the work. So, 2008, the inventory for carbon and IC, the inventory of carbon and energy, or whatever I think it's called, came out, which actually started to say this is the embodied carbon and this is the embodied energy in the manufacture, cradle to gate of this material. So suddenly we got this information and we go oh, okay, well, that's useful, but I still can't apply it on a project because it feels like a lot of. But then people start going oh, wait a minute, okay, I've got this data and actually it's not that much work. So one of my ex-colleagues, katie Simons, for example she was working for Ramble at the time in the Cambridge office and she decided off her own back to calculate the embodied carbon of different options this is probably 2011, 2010. And presented them back to the client and said this is the embodied carbon for these options that we're proposing Now. And presented them back to the client and said this is the embodied carbon for these options that we're proposing now. No one else I know was doing that now.
Speaker 2:We organized a research event, um, to celebrate, like, the best practice in our organization, and katie came and spoke of that and I was like this is amazing, right. This is really really exciting. Uh, and then other people started doing the same thing, right? So she's not the only person. Lots of people are doing this, but I'm aware of her work. And then someone like simon smith, who just happened to be her boss he sets off his own practice and he starts calculating the carbon, not on a few projects, but on every single project, and he now produces a report every year that maps how much carbon they have specified from the day their practice started until now. And so this is like really taking ownership of their work, the impact of something. They're thinking about how to reduce it, but they're also understanding the impact.
Speaker 2:Um, and then we get people starting to produce tools that calculate this stuff. So, like elliot would produce a, an online tool which they share for free through the structural engineering website, and you go, oh, actually I can start to do, you know. And then we get bitten, which is a technology nothing to carbon, but produces all of the quantities of all of the materials in the building. So we go, oh, something that was really hard is actually a lot easier now, and actually you can just create a spreadsheet and it tells you how much carbon. And and suddenly we've got this world where we're now saying, say, we should be actually not just calculating carbon, but we should have like ways of comparing across different organizations how we calculate it, and then we should be benchmarking it. Then we should be challenging people. You need to reduce your carbon and body carbon on a structure from this to this or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:Now that hasn't happened overnight, right, that started with a few people working on small projects, challenging the status quo and going the extra mile, and then they didn't just do the work, they shared the work.
Speaker 2:So other people started to hear about it and over time that has snowballed. So I think we can feel a bit helpless, like I worked on projects and felt really frustrated by the lack of change. But actually, if we keep sharing the stories, if we keep trying to do the good things, if we share when they work, if we share where they don't work and explain what are the barriers and see if other people have had the same problems, and then we can start to say this is a systemic barrier that is stopping us moving forward in this space. We all want to get to here, but we all need to solve this problem. Let's start talking about who solved it. Do you know what I mean? And we, we start to work not as individuals but as a community of practitioners to try and bring around the change we actually want to bring around yeah, I think that that is what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Is is really powerful there, because it's about the intentional consistency. Yes, so it's about just knowing that it's not going to be done in two weeks or two months or even two years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so sure, but it's really important just to be consistent yeah, and you know, I graduated in 2000 and we were already talking about the climate emergency in 2000, like that was. It's not a new conversation, it's an old conversation, but the world has moved our organizations, the way we do business has changed us. I was thinking on the way down, like about briam. I don't know about you, uh, do you know? I don't know how much you know about briam, but we, we actually do briam assessments, yeah yeah that's, yeah, the consultancy.
Speaker 1:Darren evans, we do the energy and sustainability.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we've said, I have gone on a genuine roller coaster with briam. Okay, so I've gone from not knowing what it was to finding out what it was and thinking this is absolutely brilliant, I, briam is so good to them. Realizing oh wait, as a structural engineer I don't really have much impact on briam. And starting to feel quite disenchanted or frustrated with briam and thinking this is really rubbish. Like how can they completely like, uh, cut out my, my entire industry in their assessment? So feeling quite bad about briam and thinking like we probably should be thinking about using lca or other methods to understand what's going on, not briam. And now I've kind of gone through a circle.
Speaker 2:I think the thing about briam right is, if you focus on the number of points you get, you can. You can play the game, you can, you know you can change the system to get the outcome you want without necessarily doing what you know is the best thing. But here's a bit that I kind of hadn't realized and I'm now realizing is I now know what the best thing looks like, which I didn't before brian came in. Do you know what I mean? So I can play the game and cheat the system and produce a design which still gets brian.
Speaker 2:Excellent, but actually I know that there was another better solution out there which I chose not to pursue. But I also now know that that is true. Like when I started in industry, I had no idea that we needed to think about all of this stuff when we were designing buildings, I thought all we had to do was make a stand up and maybe think a little bit about the operation carbon and that was it. So there's a richness to Breanne and it challenges us to think in ways which we didn't think before Breham came out. And actually I think, you know, whilst I think Breham should continuously evolve and should update and should reflect kind of not just the current thinking but the next step in future thinking and, you know, should really continue to challenge engineers it has brought about a huge cultural shift in our industry which I think we are quick to not fully acknowledge.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense, definitely, yeah, 100, 100, yeah, that's. That's interesting as well that you've gone on this cycle, on this, on this journey of didn't know. Now I know it's awesome, no, it's terrible. Actually. It's really good, yeah, because you've seen the impact on on a wider, which kind of goes back to. I think you've kind of reinforcing my point, which is it's really important, just to be consistent yes because that's how we actually get to and and and affect the change absolutely yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think when we first wrote the book I. I think it is still there, but we kind of went big on it. So, the regenerative structural engineer when we first wrote the book I think it is still there, but we kind of went big on it. So, the regenerative structural engineer when we first wrote it, we wrote an entire chapter on sustaining yourself, because actually it's really easy to give up in this space, to feel disheartened, to feel like I've tried and it didn't work and now I'm just I'm going to go back to just doing it the way I've always done it, because when I try and do things differently, I just get pushed back. Differently, I just get pushed back. But we need to, as a community, encourage each other, support each other, work together to continuously move forward. And I think that means, you know, like being kind to each other, looking out for each other, supporting each other, realizing that we need to have like long-term sustainability in terms of our own kind of aspirations, careers ourselves. You know, maybe we, if we're finding it traumatic, you need to maybe seek out some counseling, talk it through with someone, actually get professional help so that we can carry on doing the good work. You know. So why we're we're investing ourselves so that we can keep going doing the things that we need to do, and I think that's really important. And I think, you know, in my industry, things like talking about mental health and, you know, getting support for your mental health and stuff like that is not necessarily, um, you know kind of that that prevalent, but I think it's really important.
Speaker 2:I think it can be really disheartening, it can be quite frustrating, coming when we look around us and we see all that's going on, we go oh, and it can be overwhelming at times. You know, I feel overwhelmed at times by what I see about me. But yeah, and I I try and keep on keeping on. You know, I try and remain positive and that would be impossible on my own. It's about community. It's about having people around us, connecting with people, listening to things, and I I've loved listening to your podcast recently. I didn't know about it until you asked me to be on it and then I was like, right, I gotta.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna find out what this is all about. So I listened to a few episodes.
Speaker 1:They're really encouraging, really exciting, so I think all of that is is good for helping us keep them going well, I really appreciate you, uh, coming onto the podcast, and for your wisdom, your passion, your energy and, I think also from my point of view, just helping to nurture what I define as the rising generation, those people that are coming into deciding what they want to do in the world and impact that they want to make on the world. And so, yes, you know, it's great mentors and guides like yourself that really help to shape them, and so thank you for doing that. My absolute pleasure, my absolute pleasure. I love it. It's been great to have you here, and I hope that you enjoy the rest of Future Build and that those panels and those speeches and talks that you've got go really well for you. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks for watching to the end. I think that you'll like this, but before you do that, just make sure that you've commented and liked below and also that you subscribed.