Vertical cladding design makes curtain walling look like a walk in the park. And I do like a challenge. MAC has developed into a cladding company with a great diverse portfolio of product types and I cover them all, from alu cassette panel to architectural cement board and trapezoidal sheet.

Sub-contract design of curtain walling and rainscreen cladding, from cassette panels to sandwich panels and supporting bracketry. Corium brick slip specialist in design and scheduling. Coping panel, RWP, soffit, balcony cladding design and scheduling all covered.

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Design and management of sub-contract staff and external design resource. Training & guidance as well as hands-on design of entire building envelope. Not much I haven't done, from site survey to scheduling pressed metal, glass, curtain wall, doors, fire doors, fire screens and all associated bracketry, fixings, membranes and seals. All ready for maximum scrutiny of façade consultants. FGS folded on 3rd January 2020 despite winning £10M+ orders into 2020. Liquidity dried up towards the end of the year: investors lost faith, stopped paying accounts, withdrew finance, killed it. Administratively, it had become dysfunctional to the point that elementary design controls had been ditched in favour of rushed work and panic solutions. These had been deemed necessary to make up lost time due to the abysmal work of external design sub-contractors. Ultimately, this remains the responsibility of FGS for the inattentive oversight of its Design Managers who had permitted such poor and incomplete work. My seven months with FGS was insufficient to make the necessary impact amidst the absence of good design controls. Was I surprised at the outcome? No but it's desperately disappointing to see a company with a track record for FANTASTIC buildings falling over (figuratively speaking!)

Rapid and successful design of SFS was required to get cladding sub structure in situe to program PDQ after a contract late start. I achieved this to programme so I did the same on the next 30 storey building, now successfully concluded. Pleasure to work for a company with such a good set of systems & documentation in place and working. #plan-the-work~work-the-plan. I was tempted away to FGS for a great deal. Hesitated, then took the risk. Bad move - they folded 9 months later.

As an experienced designer, I stepped up to £4m contract value level on Kirkstall Forge, Leeds. A 4-sided glass box this was not, despite first appearances. Brilliant challenge, much learned. This is up there with University of Plymouth Marine Building (Baris) as my best work. Photos available.

After ten years in curtain walling, I moved to 'fast walling' with Kingspan's Benchmark Kreate panel system. In the production of manufacturing drawings for projects, I developed and improved fabrication drawings and Excel schedules with shop floor colleagues to perfect drawing sets for scale production. My work improved reliability of the process in terms of handling info and using appropriate manufacturing methods.

I was contacted by my old ex-boss under whom I'd learned the curtain walling craft and I re-joined the company. I designed the £450k sloped curtain walling for a private residence near Aberdeen. No architect engaged (perfect scenario!) so I designed all the interfaces and modified to cover changes and steel structural errors resulting in a spectacular building. In the 3 years away, I had learned much from my work on aluminium profile design, thermal modelling and unitised c/wall right through to full building envelope design including cladding and roofing systems as well as Reynaers, Kawneer and Schuco curtain walling. However, prospects at HWA were not sufficient to entice me to stay: I needed a change.

Curtain wall design and interface detailing. Cladding and roofing design and all interfaces - building envelope. In depth knowledge of glass, aluminium framed glazing systems and structural glazing (frameless)...

The clarity of my fabrication drawings for several hundred Kawneer AA201 unitised panels on twenty screens for Pembury Hospital in Kent helped to ensure the timely completion of the job. I did the technical authoring of the bespoke fabrication manual for this side installed system as well as producing glass, panel and metal schedules on Excel.Other responsibilities in the job included detailing new aluminium extrusions and some bespoke modifications. My wide remit covered a range of technical services including bid detailing, tender compilation, cataloguing, material requisitions, free air calcs and manual ‘U’ value calculations on new façade sections for compliance with Building Regulations Doc. L.I also covered the standard curtain wall design duties: liaising with architects, contractors and structural engineers; draughting all architectural drawings through revisions to final approval; cutting schedules for metal, glass & panels; fabrication drawings for bars, pressings, brackets.

Curtain walling & glazing systems design and draughting. Duties included architectural drawings and detail draughting for pressings, enclosures and interfaces. Also, site meetings to resolve issues with architects and main contractors. Procurement of associated products & services, sub-contract management, site visits to survey & snag preparatory to site handover.