Making it happen

It must be quite daunting as a graduate engineer to be given your own project to run on your first day in the job, but that's what happened to Trevor Butler when he joined Fulcrum. "They said: 'here's a job, do the design, tender package and manage it on site.' I went back two hours later to see if it had just been a test to see how I'd respond!" Being thrown in at the deep end doesn't seem to have done him any harm though, as he sits in the plush surroundings of BDP's London offices recounting the highlights in his career so far.

Butler started at Fulcrum after a degree in architectural engineering at Leeds University, and was encouraged to see that much of what he'd learned applied in the real world. "The Elizabeth Fry building was on site when I joined and the way things were done on that building made a lot of sense of what I'd studied because the Termodeck system was a combination of services, architecture and structural work and that's what my course was about."

Butler's education continued at Fulcrum as he learned more about what he describes as "the nuts and bolts" of the industry. "The three partners were really strong on low energy and sustainability. I learned that for the sustainability ideals to become reality, you had to understand and work with the nuts and bolts of the technical and contractual factors."

Butler was getting some low energy projects to work on, and along with a colleague, set up the construction ecology unit in 1997. "After working on one particularly challenging project, we realised that there was a need for someone in the middle to interpret the "wacky" green ideals for the mainstream engineers who have to implement them."

It was at this time that Butler also began a part time MSt in interdisciplinary design for the built environment at Cambridge University. "The course brought together everyone involved in the construction process and we had residential sessions every two or three months. It taught me that it's all about communication, understanding and building good relationships throughout the whole design team. If you've got those, then you can focus on your green vision." After completing the course, Butler stayed at Fulcrum to work on the award-winning Mile End Park project in East London.

  He then got the chance to join BDP in 2001. "The BDP ethos places a major emphasis on interdisciplinary working, and with what I had covered in my masters, I felt it would be interesting to see how this worked in practice. I joined BDP's engineering department to set up a sustainability group to work on the full range of projects and to develop our own workload. We've now got four full time people and are looking to recruit two or three more this year."

The group is a fifty-fifty split of architects and engineers currently, and Butler wants to recruit an electrical engineer to maintain the multi-disciplinary focus. " Half the work is with BDP architects and the other is with external architects. We are finding that they appreciate working alongside engineers who are committed to interdisciplinary design from the 'blank page' stages of a project. This enables sustainability considerations to be identified from the outset, rather than being an afterthought."

As well as his work at BDP, Butler helps to run a course for architecture students at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. "The programme is called Building Systems Integration. We've changed the way architects learn about building services. They are required to do calculations, energy balances, building form – and eventually services layouts. The message is that the services are there to make up for the inadequacies of their building; conversely if their building was better designed, they could do without them."

It is this understanding between engineer and architect that Butler sees as central to the success of sustainable construction. "I think it's clear that architects are the ones who can make sustainability happen. They have that relationship with the client from day one that we don't have, but we've got to make sure we're very close with them from day one so that we can influence what they do. If we as engineers can build up a trust and a good relationship with them, we can make a real difference to the sustainable performance of buildings that we're designing in this country and around the world."