Mike Hopwood

Mike’s civil and highway engineering career began at Parkman where he worked on several major projects, including the St Helens M62 link road and the A570 Ormskirk Bypass. Specialising in preliminary and detailed design work, Mike joined Giffords to work on the structural design of the Second River Dee Crossing. Mike moved to Cheshire County Council in 1994 and rose to the level of Principal Engineer. At the time, Cheshire was one of the largest UK local authorities and was also managing a large motorway network including the M6. During his progression, Mike led teams responsible for safety inspections, winter maintenance, streetworks and third party claims. Mike appeared in Court countless times as a witness for local government. Whilst with local government, Mike was responsible for the design, letting and construction of numerous large and complex civil engineering schemes. During this time, he gained particular expertise in all aspects of design, performance and specification of road building, drainage, construction materials and road and junction layouts including traffic management and road signs. Alongside his Engineering role, Mike was also a local government health and safety officer. He was responsible for workplace safety audits and risk assessments along with enforcement and the […]

Sarah Hooton

Sarah is a specialist in fire engineering and fire safety provisions in buildings – investigating design and construction defects and also where a fire has occurred, how the design or construction of fire safety provisions may have impacted upon fire spread. Sarah graduated with a first class degree in Civil Engineering, specialising in Structural Engineering from the University of Adelaide in 2001. She has since developed a career in design and construction with over 15 years’ experience at Ove Arup & Partners in their London, Birmingham and Hong Kong offices. Commencing as a Bridge Engineer in their Birmingham branch, Sarah worked on the design of a variety of civil engineering projects including the M42 widening scheme and the design of the East London Line Project (now known as part of the London Overground railway).  On the East London Line Project, she was seconded as Site Engineer for Transport for London, assisting in the management of health and safety, quality and programme. Upon returning to design consultancy in London, Sarah joined the fire engineering team, following an interest in fire safety design, where she developed fire strategies for low and high-rise residential buildings, commercial, railway stations, bus garages, museums and sports […]

Richard Giles-Carlsson

Hawkins Civil Engineer Richard Giles-Carlsson

Hannah Fletcher

Hannah graduated with a first class degree in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London in 2011. Upon graduation, Hannah joined Laing O’Rourke and worked on both infrastructure and commercial construction projects. She supervised construction works as a Site Engineer at Beckton Sewage Treatment Works Upgrade and then, as a Senior Engineer, planned and managed works on 3 projects: Crossrail- Tottenham Court Road Station, Wood Wharf (Canary Wharf) and Southbank Place. During this time Hannah gained experience in reinforced concrete construction: in-situ, pre-cast, basement raft slabs, jump forms and suspended slabs. She also gained experience in temporary works, lifting operations, excavations and installation of pressure pipelines. In 2016 Hannah moved to New Zealand to work for Fletcher Construction as a Project Manager. She led the delivery of a 40 storey commercial office tower, part of the Commercial Bay project in central Auckland, where she gained experience in steel structures, building envelopes (curtain wall façade and roof systems) and structural fire protection. Hannah joined Hawkins in 2020 and since joining has developed her skills to include the investigation of fires. She has since investigated fires in both domestic and commercial settings, as well as construction incidents, water ingress and storm damage. She is […]

Ahmad El Ghor

Ahmad is an Associate member of the American Society of Civil Engineering (A.M. ASCE). After graduating from Beirut Arab University (BAU) in 2014, Ahmad started his civil engineering career as a Research Assistant at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He then pursued further studies at AUB and got his Master’s degree in 2017, followed by a PhD in 2021. Ahmad’s research focused on the behaviour of steel and steel-concrete composite structures when subjected to fire. His research had both computational and experimental aspects, as well as focused on improving the design standards for structural resistance to fire loads. During both his Master’s and PhD degrees, he collaborated with experts in the field of Structural Fire Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin). Working with UT-Austin, Ahmad implemented two extensive, experimental elevated temperature testing programs at the Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory. As part of his PhD, Ahmad also investigated the time-dependent and post-fire behaviour of welds in steel connections when subjected to fire, as well as took part in other structural fire related research. This mainly focused on the performance of shear-tab connections with composite beams in fire, and both the time-dependent and post-fire behaviour of bolts and […]

Yang Dang

Yang Dang is a Civil Engineer based at Hawkins in Singapore

Jonathan Dance

Jonathan graduated from The University of Exeter with a degree in Physics in 2019. During his time at university, Jonathan’s MPhys degree covered a wide range of topics including advanced quantum physics, condensed matter physics, electromagnetism and biophysics. He completed a master’s thesis focused on producing a 3D finite element analysis model of a section of the human spine from CT imagery, in order to better understand the role the endplate plays in distributing loads in the spine. Jonathan also spent a year living in Christchurch, New Zealand studying at Canterbury University as part of his degree. He now works alongside Ros Lambert-Porter with architects, manufacturers, facilities managers, and end-users to supply the following services: noise impact, room acoustics assessments, noise at work assessments, design consultation, vibration measurement, and consultation for product development. Jonathan joined Hawkins in November 2019 and is a Senior Acoustics Consultant based in our London Office.

Tom Dale

Since graduating in 2013 with a first-class bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Warwick, Tom has pursued a career in fire safety and risk management. His first position was as a Safety Engineer at DNV, completing quantitative risk assessments, estimating the likelihood and consequence of potential fire and explosion events within onshore, offshore and floating assets in the Oil & Gas industry. Results from these assessments allowed clients to evaluate the fire and explosion risk arising from their sites, to support design decisions ensuring compliance with legislative requirements. Whilst at DNV, Tom also acted as an environmental auditor for the Safety Health and Environmental (SHE) audit team. Tom completed several site investigation, land remediation and gasholder demolition projects in the UK to support managing onsite hazards. This also provided Tom with experience in conducting health and safety investigations of lost time injury incidents, which can occur at construction sites. Tom began a part-time Masters in Fire and Explosion Engineering at the University of Leeds, balancing work and studies for three years, before graduating with a Distinction in 2017. His dissertation involved research into ‘boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions’ (BLEVE), specifically involving liquified propane gas (LPG) aiming to further […]

James Clarke

James is a fire investigator specialising in fire engineering design, fire safety management and fire risk assessment. Since graduating from The University of Huddersfield in 2017 with a first-class honours degree in Mechanical Engineering, James has worked in a number of industry sectors across project management, mechanical engineering, and fire safety engineering. James’ degree covered a range of topics, including Mechanical Design, Manufacturing, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Finite Element Analysis, and Business Management. When given the option to specialise, James focused on a live industrial dissertation subject covering asset utilisation and six sigma manufacturing techniques, coupled with technical assessment on the design and analysis of helicopter landing gear and the optimal design of trailer aerodynamic devices. During his time at university, James also held a project engineering position with a Yorkshire based pharmaceutical company where he assisted with the development and introduction of new production and packaging facilities. James quickly developed the ability to assess both products and components involved with flammable and explosive environments, advising the internal engineering and Health & Safety teams. As part of a summer internship, James continued in operations development with a national telecommunications company, to help increase efficiency in maintenance processes and data analysis. During […]

Rob Baldock

Rob graduated from Cambridge University in 2003 with first-class B.A. and MEng degrees focused on structural and mechanical engineering. In collaboration with Arup, he completed his PhD in 2007, investigating the application of structural optimisation to building design. Rob then worked in Arup’s London Buildings Group for more than 6 years on diverse local and international projects in various sectors. These included long-span and transfer structures, deep basements, and tensile fabric roofs. Rob also has practical site experience, working on secondment to the contractor at Canary Wharf Crossrail Station and as resident engineer on a school construction in the Indian Himalayas. Rob is very experienced in structural glass design, having spent over 6 years at Eckersley O’Callaghan, where he was involved with iconic and pioneering projects associated with façade systems. He has managed the design of glazing systems on a number of international flagship Apple stores, including the hemispherical Marina Bay Sands store in Singapore, and has lead collaborations with major glazing contractors. He was also the lead engineer for a pair of complex pedestrian bridge structures, linking office buildings over a public highway. Rob joined Hawkins’ Built Environment Team in early 2022 with 14 years of building design experience working as […]