How has specializing in restoration shaped you as an engineer?
When you work on older buildings, you’re often surprised by what you find. Over the years, I’ve learnt to foresee potential problems and create flexible designs we can adapt quickly onsite. It’s important to be open to change. Older buildings are often protected as heritage assets too, which means we can’t touch their external architecture.
Specializing in restoration has also given me the opportunity to work with a broad range of materials including masonry, terracotta, timber, concrete and steel. It’s made me a multitasker and in my day-to-day role as a project manager, I work on a variety of large and small projects hands-on, from design and planning, to working with contractors onsite.
One of the first projects I worked on was the 48-storey Tour de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Tower) in Montreal, built in 1964. That was another project that involved crawling into the spaces behind the structure. In this case, to identify and analyze the original prefabricated panels that needed reinforcing.