Building Performance Engineer of the Year
Recognises and rewards the contributions of practising building services engineers to creating and maintaining a sustainable built environment. It celebrates those who have made an outstanding contribution to the science, art and practice of building services engineering between 2016 and 2018.
Winner: Tom Hopton, Associate, BuroHappold Engineering
Tom Hopton of BuroHappold Engineering is this year’s Engineer of the Year.
Praised by the judges for his ‘superb levels of experience and knowledge’, Hopton has worked in the building services industry for 14 years – and with BuroHappold since 2015 – and is a fellow of CIBSE.
He has been the lead engineer for many award-winning projects with innovative design at their core – from the UK’s first large-scale horse-manure biomass system to the restoration of a 900-year-old building into a modern training campus.
Hopton isn’t just active in project work, however; he leads the sustainability team’s efforts to share and exchange knowledge among more than 500 engineers in 17 offices across 10 countries.
He also leads BuroHappold’s ‘smart building’ community, a global group of engineers whose focus is on unlocking the potential of technology in ‘people-centric design’ to achieve high-performance buildings while having the lightest touch on our planet.
As well as a demanding career as a practising engineer, Hopton has also been a part-time lecturer at Bath College for the past decade, teaching building services design and controls. In this time, he has guided more than 150 students through their HNC/D programmes.
In 2017, he developed an online learning resource (Tom Hopton on Prezi) that has received 15,000 hits so far. Lauded by the judges for his ‘dedication’, Hopton speaks passionately about his teaching role, which he clearly considers a privilege, taking seriously the responsibility that this holds for an industry facing such big challenges, now and in the future.
Shortlist
David Cheshire, Regional Director, Sustainability - AECOM
Tom Naughton, Associate – FairHeat