The bigger picture

David Gilpin has got a few hours before his flight back to Amsterdam. Despite more meetings and a journey to Heathrow ahead of him he is relaxed and affable as he explains how his decision to become a building services engineer was more by accident than design. "I was originally sponsored by a manufacturing company to do a general engineering course at university but I realised by the end that manufacturing wasn't really what I wanted to do." Fortunately the four-year course at Cambridge included two common years, studying everything from structures and materials to electrical and mechanical engineering. "Architecture and construction appealed to me so I decided to apply to Arup, partly on the basis of its reputation and also because I liked its philosophy and approach to work."

This background has stood Gilpin in good stead. "I don't want to be a specialist, I don't want to be the world's expert on lifts or chillers, I quite like being a bit of a generalist. I'm interested in multidisciplinary design and holistic building design and having a broad background is really useful because you talk everyone's language."

This is an area where building services engineers are, if not uniquely, certainly well placed. "Architecture is very much about emotion and the connection about how you feel in a building, whereas structural engineering is a lot about physics, it's less subjective." Services sits between the two. "I can say in physics terms the temperature in that room will be this, but if you define comfort for somebody it's not quite as simple as that. It depends on the weather outside, what you're wearing, how you're feeling."

Gilpin points out that consultancy goes beyond pure engineering. "A lot of what we do has a lot of user interaction, I like that need to understand the user at quite a personal level. The more you understand about how the client wants to use the building the more you can make the right decision about how it should operate, which is not as subjective as architecture but I think it is more connected to the client than say structural engineering."

The Association of Consulting Engineers and The Worshipful Company of Engineers named 31-year old Gilpin Young Consulting Engineer of the Year in 2004. This win was influenced by his role as project team leader and mechanical systems designer for the new Selfridges store in Birmingham. Yet he is keen to stress that it was a team effort. "It would be unfair to say it was my project because it was a product of a lot of people's work. Yes, I project managed it but the design behind it was very much a team effort. It was as much an award for the project."

Gilpin now heads up the seven strong building services team in Arup's Amsterdam office. He sees this as a new challenge. "I was running a bigger team when I worked on Selfridges, but it's very different being part of the management team for what is effectively a small business. The size of the team means the dynamics change and the way you deal with work coming in is different; it's a lot more hands on."

Working in the Netherlands has been refreshing. "I've never lived as a foreigner somewhere before, and while in cultural terms the Netherlands isn't massively different, in some ways that makes it more difficult because the differences are more subtle." It's similar for the technical challenges. "It's in the detail rather than the bigger picture. The Netherlands are way ahead of the UK with things like the EU directive on the energy performance of buildings and the use of ground source heat pumps, which here are seen as old hat, no one thinks they are a risk."

Risk is an area that Gilpin believes could end up stifling innovation "It should be more about managing risk taking." The knock on effect of stifling innovation is that people's interest in the industry is also stifled, both for existing engineers and newcomers. "As a consulting engineer we don't sell widgets, we sell knowledge and the only way we can sell it is communication. We've got to do the same thing with the profile of the industry."

In the future Gilpin is keen to maintain the mix of design and leadership that his current role gives him. "I enjoy the challenges of leadership but I would hate to miss out and leave behind the technical role. What I like about consultancy is that balance. If I'd stayed in manufacturing they would have pushed me towards pure management, and I would have been an engineer by training not practice." Importantly for Gilpin good design is about balancing the various forces on a project. "There is no right answer. That's what I like about it."