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From helping shape entire cities to adapting infrastructure to deal with the climate emergency, a career at Buro Happold presents the chance to make a difference. With a world class reputation, our creativity and our people have delivered positive change to clients, the environment, and communities alike. If you want to be part of something bigger, this is your chance.
We have teams in Bath, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Leeds so please indicate your preferred location when applying.
A unique challenge
We believe that radical ideas are needed to help reimagine the future of our built environment. A future that is both sustainable and equitable. We must realise this at a time of unprecedented change, complexity and intensity. This brings with it great challenges, but also great opportunity.
Buro Happold’s Sustainability and Physics team is made up of engineers, consultants and practitioners with varied backgrounds and experiences. We are deliberately diverse and collaborative, united by the common purpose of engaging with these challenges and opportunities.
Due to the development of strong relationships, an excellent reputation and a shift in emphasis within the market to provide more robust tools and processes in an increasingly data-rich environment, we are expanding the team to include more computational skills. We don’t want someone to be marginalized as behind-the-scenes programmer, but one who can integrate within a diverse range of projects and effectively communicate with others of all backgrounds and specialities.
What is the Sustainability & Physics team?
Sustainability engineering can be extremely broad, however we tend to split this down in ‘building physics’ and broader sustainability consulting.
Building physics includes energy modelling, advanced simulation, micro-climate analysis and parametric modelling. Sustainability consulting includes embodied carbon analysis, sustainability assessments (BREEAM, LEED, Living Building Challenge etc), building performance (e.g. post occupancy evaluation), social value, health & wellbeing and circular economy.
The team works across a range of scales and project types from policy, strategy and masterplanning through to building design, soft landings, monitoring and management.
Our clients and collaborators include world leading corporates, developers, institutions, architects and government across a wide range of sectors including commercial property, higher education, arts and culture.
Where does this role fit in?
We are looking for someone with a keen interest in the more computational aspects of engineering design and analysis to set up processes and build tools to support our engineering specialists in delivering high quality, sustainability-led outcomes to clients. This could involve automation of existing workflows, manipulation of large data sets and software / web app development. Ideally, the candidate should possess a strong appreciation of applied data-science in a multidisciplinary environment, where application of computational engineering both supports and leads developments.
Development will be conducted predominantly within our open-source platform Building and Habitats object Model (BHoM) but can also extend to other bespoke in-house tools. We work to develop unique and bespoke computational platforms that integrate with existing software such as Rhino, Grasshopper, Revit, and other AEC related tools to optimise engineering design across the built environment.
To help continue driving our offer to the next level we require ambitious and enterprising individuals with a focus on applying their skills on field specific, and generalisable problems. This person is not expected to be an expert in every field but will have a broad interest and some specialist skills that complement the current team balance.
You will be expected to work as part of a close-knit team under the guidance of our senior staff, utilising all technologies available to support, push and enable the engineering of innovative solutions. As part of a development team you will support in code development, testing, and delivery of the tools to projects each sprint.
What sort of projects would I work on?
Buildings and Habitats object Model (BHoM) – Contributed to the creation of an open-source platform to support design tasks and software interoperability across the construction industry, kick-started by Buro Happold but open to all.
Victoria Park Building, University of Portsmouth – a showcase of our commitment to delivering low carbon buildings, we undertook extensive dynamic thermal and energy modelling to optimise the façade and HVAC strategy to drive down operational energy consumption and maximise renewable energy generation.
C40 Study - We work extensively with C40 Cities to generate original research, thought leadership, tools and methodologies and pilot these with cities across the world. Our team led a major two-year programme of technical assistance to 25 global cities to assess the air quality, health and economic benefits of climate action. Our sustainability consultants also led a C40 study into the multiple benefits of deep retrofit, including job creation, as well as reduced energy poverty, asthma and cold mortality.
Buro Happold won the coveted CIBSE Building Performance Consultancy of the Year five years running (2018, 2019, 2020,2021 and 2022). We are also active members of UK Green Building Council and World Green Building Council including advisory groups on Delivering Social Value, Circular Economy and Advancing Net Zero Renewables and Offsetting. Many staff globally are members of boards, organisations, and/or visiting lecturers at universities.
What degree will I be studying?
We welcome people into our team with a broad range of experience. Typical degrees include:
- Computer Science
- Data Science
- Software Engineering
- Mathematics
- Physics or Natural Sciences
- Civil, Environmental, Mechanical Engineering or similar
What would I do?
The role is somewhat flexible and your day-to-day tasks will depend on your expertise and project demand so could include, but is not limited to, the following;
- Supporting the sustainable design and development of industry-leading engineering projects by contributing to analysis, reporting and presentations to develop design concepts, using simulation techniques such as dynamic thermal modelling, daylight simulation and energy /carbon modelling to inform:
- Urban design and building form, massing and orientation strategies
- Façade thermal and solar performance
- Natural ventilation and mixed-mode strategies
- Passive cooling strategies and design to prevent overheating
- Low- and zero-carbon (renewable) technology appraisal
- Climate change resilience
- Health, wellbeing and productivity
- Embodied carbon strategies to reduce whole-life impacts
- Building / system performance in operation and strategies to close the performance gap
- Daylight provision
- Internal and external comfort (thermal, wind, glare etc.)
- Building energy performance
- Using visual programming interfaces and software APIs to automate complex workflows, linking disjointed software’s, systems and processes
- Working alongside an existing codebase to push forward capabilities and provide usable tools both internally and externally
- Increasing the visibility and understandability of outputs through data visualisation
- Developing good quality code, capable of being reviewed and re-used in languages such as Python, C# and JavaScript – we tend to write in C# but any language skills can be ported
- Versioning code via GitHub, BitBucket or other appropriate tool
- Testing, debugging and fixing code written by yourself or others
Details of the Internship Opportunity
This is a paid 12 month Placement aimed at current students taking part in a sandwich course at their University, gap year students or students whom have already graduated.
The start date is flexible, but most students will start their role in August or September 2022.
Buro Happold have adopted a hybrid working policy, where you have the flexibility to have a mixture of home and office working - although we do encourage our Interns to be in the office as much as possible to get the most out of the internship experience, and get involved in social aspects arranged by our Young Engineers Forum should you wish.
Interested? Intrigued? Inspired?
This role is for current students for an August/September 2022 start.
