Graduate Fire Engineer

A graduate fire engineering role developing fire safety strategies, modelling smoke and evacuation, and advising clients on safe building designs and regulatory compliance.

What is Fire Engineering?  

Every building presents unique fire safety challenges. To fully address life safety and design aspirations, your scheme needs a unique, holistic, creative approach to developing a simple, yet robust, fire safety solution.  

Our involvement on projects spans from concept to completion, and further, to occupation and continued operational management. Our clients find this level of continued engagement reassuring as we guide them through the life cycle of the building.  

For multiple building portfolio clients such as The National Museums of Scotland and University College London, we provide a complete consultancy service. This includes assessing the capabilities of their existing assets, developing solutions for refurbishment projects and advise on the design of new buildings whilst interfacing with multiple design teams and helping the client with their ongoing building management.  

We listen and consult to fully understand the design aspirations for a development, and we facilitate these through imaginative and innovative fire engineering techniques, often working beyond the boundaries of prescriptive code guidance.  

What sort of projects would I work on?  

• 5 Broadgate - At approximately 100,000m2, 5 Broadgate is one of the largest and most robust and resilient single office buildings in London’s financial district. It was also an award-winning trailblazer of sustainability principles, representing the dawn of a new shift towards a consciousness around the importance of considering embodied carbon in commercial buildings.

• Battersea Power Station – Repurposing this historic landmark in to a 21st Century destination where people work, rest and play has required us to take a highly creative approach to the brief and developing bespoke designs that deliver added value to our client, and an iconic facility for the city. 

• Tottenham Hotspur Football Club Stadium  - This project saw Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’s stadium at White Hart Lane replaced by a world class UEFA/FIFA compliant arena. Buro Happold provided multidisciplinary services from concept through to completion.

• Co-Op Live: The new arena in Manchester will have the largest maximum capacity of any indoor music venue in the UK. The goal was for the arena to be among the safest in the world so we developed the design to achieve a high standard of safety while delivering a flexible layout and optimum music experience in a space designed to welcome the best and biggest artists from around the world. 

• Everton FC: Bramley-Moore Dock stadium: Buro Happold helped Everton Football Club to create a landmark new stadium that will welcome supporters to be entertained in comfort and safety.

 What would I do?  

• Develop expertise in delivering fire safety engineering solutions in a multi-disciplinary environment with solid experience in developing fire strategies, undertaking engineering analysis and applying performance based designs. 

• Work with other members of the team to understand and apply fire safety legislation and design guidance in the UK and internationally as part of global project delivery. 

• Carry out and review fire engineering calculations including smoke modelling and evacuation analysis from simple hand calculations to complex 3D computational modelling 

• Build knowledge to be able to identify appropriate fixed fire protection systems, i.e. automatic fire detection and/or suppression to support fire engineering design solutions. 

• Communicate and present technical solutions to a variety of clients and stakeholders. 

• Ensure team members are kept informed of important and relevant service/design decisions. 

• Liaise with approval authorities on fire safety designs. 

• Demonstrate excellent consultancy skills; Good communication and experience in dealing with difficult situations, negotiation and understanding the differing needs of our clients and within stakeholder groups. 

• Visit sites to see how our fire strategies are implemented. 

What degree would I need?   

For our specialist Fire discipline, we would prefer a Masters in Fire Engineering.  

Alternatively a Bachelor’s degree in Civil or Mechanical Engineering, as they offer relevant foundation knowledge. 

Graduates at Buro Happold  

When you join Buro Happold you are embedded into an exciting network of engineers and consultants, that supports your career development.  We have a Graduate Connect learning programme that targets specific learning and supports your journey to chartership as well as our Young Employee's Forum that links all our young talent in terms of knowledge sharing, learning and very importantly socialising.  

We place great importance on a having a safe and inclusive environment and will seek to make any arrangements that may be required to enable all who work with us to thrive. We have flexible working hours and hybrid working, and welcome applications from all backgrounds and walks of life.