a day in the life... Sara McGowan
Building Services Engineer with
Arup International construction company.
Responsible for the Sydney Opera House, Tate Modern and the Pompidou Centre...
Featuring: Mitchall D'Arcy (15) and Heather Bonner (15)
10.00 am
Sara welcomes Heather and Mitchall to Arup's offices in the West End of London.
10.30am
First of all, a crash course in what "building services engineers" really do. Sara explains that what she's responsible for are the insides of buildings - the power, the water supply, the ventilation - basically everything that makes a building comfortable to be inside.
Find out more here...
11.00am
Once a building is under construction, Sara will don her hard hat and visit the site a couple of times a week.. but at the moment, her jobs are all in the planning stages.
Heather and Mitchall are invited to sit in on a meeting with her colleague Heather Carter. They're discussing a new building project and all the steps that will have to be taken to make sure it doesn't fall behind schedule. This involves co-ordinating all the sub-contractors.
What's with all the drawings?
Sara and Heather constantly refer to plans and drawings as they talk about the project.
Sometimes words are not enough! Sara reckons she can't discuss work without a notebook to sketch her ideas out as she speaks
12.00pm
Sara demonstrates the office printer. It's set to produce A0-sized print-offs of technical drawings (ie 16x as big as a piece of A4).
What's just been printed are the are drawings for each storey of a building, including the basement. Sara explains how to read the lines and symbols the professionals use.
13.00pm
Time for a spot of lunch. Luckily the office is just round the corner from some groovy cafes, so soup and a sandwich is within easy reach. Better than school dinners.
14.00pm
OK, your turn, guys. Sara leaves Mitchall and Heather to show their talents as the building services engineers of the future...
They're shown the plan of a theatre complex Sara's worked on herself.
Their challenge is to position the air handling units, which provide the ventilation to the building, into the plan.
Not as easy as it might appear as there are many constraints.
Verdict:
"Excellent work!" says Sara, after assessing the solution they've come up with.
"You've obviously understood all the issues, and you've come up with a plan for this building that would really work…"
15.30pm
And here's one Sara prepared earlier! This is the brand new Greater London Authority building, now known as City Hall, designed by Norman Foster and Sara's company Arup.
PS – Find out how to become a buildings services engineer? Here’s how Sara did it!
Planning Stages
What goes on during the planning stages?
There are lots of things to keep in mind when designing a building - and there are also a lot of people involved in the process.
First you need a client. This is the person or company that asks for the building to be developed - and puts up the money to pay for it.
The architect designs the form of the building and the spaces inside, looking at how the the different rooms and functions will fit together in 3D, and how people will move around and use the spaces.
He or she will come up with a concept for the building and then the Design Team, made up of the Architect, the Engineers and the Quantity Surveyors (who work out how much the building will cost). This team will help the Architect optimise their ideas within the constraints of the design - ie. the client's expectations, cost, location, use etc.
The team will then produce a set of drawings and reports that describe and detail every element of the building, from the walls to the columns to the pipes and ducts - even the door handles. These drawings are then passed on to the Building Contractors who will actually build the building.
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The Design Team don't build the building - this is done by Trade Contractors. Each Trade Contractor involved in the job will have a specialist area (or trade). For example, they may specialise in concrete, steelwork, ductwork or pipework. These Contractors work together to complete the whole building. The engineer's role is to ensure that this coordination process takes place and that the construction of the building runs smoothly.
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back to the drawing board...
The drawings that the engineers produce enable the Trade Contractors to price, and then build, the building.
These drawings are therefore very important and need to convey all the relevant information in an understandable way. To make this easier there are certain drawing conventions that engineers use so that any other engineer or contractor picking up the drawing can understand it. There are symbols that represent all the 'components' in a building services system, eg. pumps and fans. Certain line types/thicknesses signify pipes or ducts and are used depending on the size and scale of the drawing.
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their challenge
Engineers are often asked to advise the Architect on the layout and form of the proposed building and to make preliminary estimates of the area required for the plant to serve the building and suggest where it might go!
In the exercise, Heather and Mitchall were given the Architect's plans for a large theatre complex. Their job was to size and locate the building's air handling units (which provide the air for ventilation of the spaces). Due to the many different activities that will be carried out inside the building eg. theatre, offices, dressing rooms, music rooms etc, it was necessary to fit in eight air handling units.
Sara asked Heather and Mitchall to have a go at locating all eight - making sure that they were close the area that they were ventilating, that they had a connection to an outside wall and that they didn't impact on the main concert hall in the centre of the building - not an easy task!
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sara did it!
I did Scottish Highers in Physics, English, Maths, French and Art, and then Scottish SYS (Sixth Year Studies) in Physics, Maths and Art - a rather strange combination!
I then did a degree in Building Design Engineering at Strathclyde University. This degree allowed me to combine Physics and Art as I did classes in Architecture, Building Services Engineering and Structural Engineering in 1st and 2nd Year before specialising in Building Services in 3rd and 4th year.
If you love solving problems, making things work and seeing a finished 'product' then engineering is for you! To be a good engineer you need to have an enquiring mind and an ability to think laterally. You do need a background in maths and physics, but an ability to think conceptually, to get the details right without losing sight of the big picture and to work in a team are just as important.
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