Opinion Webb Yates Engineers thestructuralengineer.org Profi le £180 spent on a promotional postcard helped Steve Webb and Andy Yates create a business with a £5M turnover and offi ces in London, Birmingham, Bristol and Dubai. By Jackie Whitelaw. From the start of their careers, Humble beginnings like so many engineers, the To get started though, Webb and men had enjoyed imagining Yates had to work their socks off themselves as their own bosses. in the evenings and at weekends But it took 10 years of working on private commissions, while life, a growing dislike of big still fully employed during the corporate culture, and the sunlit day, to build up enough cash in economy of the mid-2000s the bank to provide them with to give them the courage to capital. turn the dream into a real, live ‘We wanted £6000 to business. £10 000 each for three months, STEVE WEBB ANDY YATES It is a business that last year and we got that by doing loft won two Structural Awards extensions and some steelwork After eight years of many that turns over £5M and employs from the Institution of Structural design,’ says founding partner meetings in various pubs plotting 75 staff working on projects Engineers – for the Hoover Steve Webb. With money tight, an independent future, Steve ranging from arts to aviation, Building (Figure 1) and Haiti they took all the charity they Webb and Andy Yates fi nally prototyping to housing and Chapel (Figure 2) – as well as were off ered, from a tiny 20m2 of made the decision to quit their infl atables to loadbearing stone. winning engineering consultancy offi ce space in the loft at Rybka respective employers and set up And at the heart is a philosophy of the year in both the Building Battle mechanical and electrical their own practice in 2005. of collaborative creativity that and Construction News Awards. engineers, to some old desks Over 14 years at Webb engages the broad range Clearly, what was discussed over and chairs that RMJM were Yates, the pair have created a of engineers as well as the drinks over two decades ago throwing out, which necessitated multidisciplinary organisation architects in the team. had some serious substance. a trip with a van to Cambridge to collect them. ‘And we made a table from some glass I had in the garden and some trestles,’ says fellow founding partner Andy Yates. ‘It’s amazing to remember that when we started we had four desks, three chairs, a homemade table and just one computer. But it was effi cient and we just got on with it,’ says Webb. Work came in quickly, much faster than they expected. Early commissions came from former employers – Capita for Yates, and SKM for Webb. Figure 1 W The Hoover Building Client: IDM Developments Key to converting the Grade 2 listed building to create 66 residential units was adding additional levels between the existing fl oor slabs. Various prefabricated timber trusses hidden in walls are used to either support or hang the new fl oors and roof, meaning that the new walls could be simply lifted in and stacked on top of each other, forming both the structure and partitions. MORLEY VON STERNBERG VON MORLEY 30 April 2019 | TheStructuralEngineer TTSE86_30-32_Profile.inddSE86_30-32_Profile.indd 3030 221/03/20191/03/2019 111:321:32 Opinion thestructuralengineer.org Webb Yates Engineers Figure 2 W Haiti Chapel Architect: Guylee Simmonds Client: Hope Health Action Webb Yates worked with Hope Health Action – a British healthcare charity – to construct a new chapel in northern Haiti. The primary element of the brief was to produce an 11m spanning roof structure, but in a building that would have seismic and hurricane resistance. designing the sun shading for the Hopkins Architects Dubai Expo 2020 pavilion, which involves a series of hanging cable nets for aluminium panels that turn in the wind. And he is also just fi nishing GUYLEE SIMMONDS GUYLEE the Anna Freud Foundation building, a £16M timber-and- ‘They gave us commissions concrete composite offi ce and and Capita kept me on for a school in Pentonville, London day a week for a while,’ Yates (Figure 4). remembers. ‘That was when we ‘Clients come to us for found out how supportive and Andy’s airports genius, but also encouraging other engineers can because we have a reputation be.’ for good-quality structural Nevertheless, they were design in unusual materials,’ careful with the money. It became says Webb. ‘It’s a house fl avour a major decision to spend £180 that architects respond to – we sending out a promotional are always looking for more postcard of a modular hotel at characterful and inventive Gatwick Airport that the new solutions for structural frames. practice was involved in. ‘There are a lot of engineered ‘We were reluctant to spend steel frames and concrete decks the money on the mailshot, but out there, but we try to make off the back of that we were hired every project an opportunity to to work on Yotels (hotels with exploit diff erent ways of building capsule, cabin-style, smart but that are more environmentally inexpensive rooms) at Gatwick, friendly, by using timber or stone Stansted, Heathrow and Schiphol Figure 3 for example. N Kilo box, Heathrow Airport airport in the Netherlands. We ‘We don’t get the easy jobs. Webb Yates is civil and structural engineer for the reinforced concrete 200m × 100m worked with Conran and Partners basement structure, 18m below ground. Complex geotechnical ground movement That’s our culture and we work analyses have been carried out to ensure that heave and settlement movements are and The Manser Practice to adequately resisted by the structural frame. with others to come up with a develop the modular, fl at-pack better solution – the best for the approach to Yotel construction,’ project rather than the one that says Yates. Terminal 1 and I found myself in Ferrovial Agroman. Webb Yates is is easiest for us. We are doing And from there, the practice, the airport world,’ Yates says. the civil and structural engineer a lot of slightly unusual projects and in particular Yates himself, Originally, Webb too was at Terminal 2B for the demolition that give the clients something developed an airport speciality involved in the airport work. ‘But of several existing buildings, special. that contributes around 30% of it’s a bit too procedural for me,’ and construction of a very large ‘That’s not to say we don’t the business’s current turnover. he says. ‘Andy swung to the buried basement structure like really straightforward, highly rescue and since then it must measuring 200m × 100m with paid work,’ he says. ‘We do, and Complementary strengths have contributed around £10M a base 18m below ground. The please send it through!’ ‘The contractor we worked with to the coff ers over the years. space is for a future terminal on Yotel was Mansell. It had not Andy has an excellent reputation transit system and baggage Formative experiences been confronted before with a and the projects are massive, far handling, while on top will be new Webb and Yates met in the late consultant that was light on its bigger than you would expect for aircraft stands and a taxi lane. 1990s at Whitby Bird. Yates feet, reactive, and probably a lot a company of our size.’ Meanwhile, Webb is playing to had joined the fi rm in 1995 after cheaper than bigger fi rms, so it The latest aviation job is the his strengths in the technically graduating from the University hired us for a modular, lightweight Heathrow Kilo box (Figure 3) challenging, architectural end of Dundee, in civil engineering. ‘I passenger bridge at Heathrow for Gebler Tooth Architects and of the business, leading a team had originally wanted to follow TheStructuralEngineer | April 2019 31 TTSE86_30-32_Profile.inddSE86_30-32_Profile.indd 3131 221/03/20191/03/2019 111:321:32 Opinion Webb Yates Engineers thestructuralengineer.org my dad and be an electrical frustration of working with big engineer, but I’m colour-blind, corporate practices. ‘There are which is not good when you are a lot of people with MBAs in big dealing with wiring. I turned over fi rms,’ says Webb. ‘Engineers the page in the careers brochure lose agency to business and there was civil engineering. administrators, so if you are I’d found A levels and in particular interested in being an engineer pure maths very diffi cult, but at you’re either subservient or you Dundee they taught it all in a very turn into a manager. We were practical way and I got a fi rst.’ both turning into managers After six years, he went, with and wanted to be hands-on his teacher wife, to work in engineers.’ Ethiopia for a year designing Yates, an enthusiastic learner, primary schools. ‘We’d always has now got an MBA himself, wanted to work abroad and once ironically, along with an earth I was chartered we decided sciences degree. ‘I wanted to that was the right time. It was know more about running a Figure 4 a proper job in Ethiopia, paid N Anna Freud Foundation building business. What surprised me was at local wages. I was working that the MBA didn’t tell you that, Architect: Penoyre & Prasad with a Danish architect called Client: Anna Freud Centre but about how to think about An existing chocolate factory warehouse is extended with a new building comprising a Heidi Norman and we made sure basement, three storeys at the back and up to fi ve storeys at the front of the site along things or approaches to take.