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Type
Lecture

Lessons learned from the new Museum of London

Event organised by ICE

Date
18 September 2024
Time
18:00 - 19:30 BST (GMT+1)
Location
Institution of Civil Engineers
One Great George Street
Westminster
London, SW1P 3AA
United Kingdom

This event has now ended

Overview

Ruth Oates is a director at Buro Four who have been project managers on the new Museum of London in West Smithfield near Farringdon, since 2015. The Museum is one of the largest cultural projects underway in Europe at the moment and provides a significant case study in the field of retrofitting existing buildings.  

Ruth will present an overview of the plans for the Museum of London and the road and railway infrastructure upgrades to support it. She will run through a number of the challenges and complexities on a project of this nature which saw dilapidated buildings being renovated at ground level, whilst existing Victorian railway tunnels were upgraded beneath, with the Thameslink Railway continuing to operate. Ruth’s presentation will include an overview of the design approach, review of risks, programme, procurement, stakeholder management and embedding sustainability in decision making.  

Ruth will conclude by summarising key lessons learnt from this and other complex refurbishments she and her colleagues at Buro Four have worked on. This presentation should provide useful takeaways for those working on existing buildings.

Ruth is also completing a piece of research for Buro Four on the ‘project manager of the future’ and will also ask for some audience engagement for her research at the end of the discussion.

Image: View across the Museum of London Campus from the South West. Credit Secchi Smith

Programme

18:00 - 18:30

Arrivals, tea and coffee

18:30 - 18:35

Introduction

18:35 - 19:10

Lecture

19:10 - 19:25

Questions

19:25 - 19:30

Meeting round up and close

Speaker

Ruth Oates

Ruth Oates

Buro Four

director

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Ruth Oates

Ruth is a director of Buro Four, a leading project management consultancy, with headquarters in London. 

A graduate of Imperial College, Ruth is a Chartered Civil Engineer, CEng MICE, who specialised in project management after 7 years practicing as a civil and structural engineer at Expedition. She is an NEC4 ECC accredited project manager and uses her collaborative style to lead challenging projects in the London area. 

From her engineering background, she brings a passion for sensitively reworking existing buildings which have been her focus for most of her 13 years as a project manager at Buro Four. 

Some of her projects include 55 Baker St for London and Regional, 80 Charlotte St for Derwent London, 160 Aldersgate which is DLA Piper’s London HQ, and the newly refurbished Royal Academy of Arts. 

For the last 7 years, her focus has been on the new Museum of London in West Smithfield, with the delivery of the early enabling works contracts, including strengthening Network Rail Thameslink tunnels running through the site and preparing the old market buildings which will become the museum’s new home.

These projects have honed Ruth’s experience working with existing buildings and have highlighted the importance of knowledge-sharing in retrofit both within our business and externally, across the industry. 

Dedicated to her profession and to supporting the next generation, Ruth has been a trustee of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a RAEng (Royal Academy of Engineering) visiting teaching fellow in engineering design at UCL and a trustee of Buro Four’s Employee Benefit Trust. She regularly lectures project management students including at UCL, University of West London, Denmark Technical University and Copenhagen Business School. 

Paul Perry

Paul Perry

AECOM

technical director

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Paul Perry

Paul Perry, technical director at AECOM, has much experience in the design of alterations, additions and redevelopment of existing buildings especially those that are above, adjacent and even below existing mass transit railway stations and tunnels with major multidisciplinary aspects and the need for industry best practice.

With three decades of engineering experience, he holds a long track record of excellence in tunnelling and underground projects, having worked on building and bridge damage assessments along the HS2 tunnels into Euston, with prior involvement in oversite development above tunnels and stations, both in the UK and Hong Kong.

Paul is a member of The British Tunnelling Society (BTS) executive committee, with particular interest in the liaisons between BTS and The British Geotechnical Association, and between BTS and The Panel for Historic Engineering Works. BTS is supporting the Net Zero Tunnels Group, which Paul is also involved in, and as an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects he holds a detailed interest in infrastructure architecture.