Director Insights - with James Lavender CEng MIFireE
Introduction:
James is one of our Founding Directors, based at our head office in Richmond. With over 25 years of experience in the fire safety industry, he has developed expertise that spans laboratory testing, consultancy, expert witness work, and mentoring the next generation of engineers. He is a Chartered Engineer and additionally represents the IFE on the ‘Fire & Built Environment Sector Policy and Strategy Committee’
What inspired you to become an engineer?
The greatest influence on my young life to wish to become an engineer, or at least, follow an engineering discipline, was my father. He was a coachbuilder and taught me the basic engineering skills, such as problem solving and lateral thinking that have underpinned my career.
Tell us about your career to date:
My first role within the fire safety industry was as a technician within a fire testing laboratory, the then Chiltern International Fire (“CIF”), where my main role was to undertake commercial fire resistance testing of fire separating elements. Whilst at CIF I also engaged in the development of the Single Burning Item reaction to fire testing facility as well as undertaking the round robin type testing for the development of the reaction to fire table in Approved Document B. Furthermore, whilst at CIF I had the opportunity to work on unique research projects including full scale fire tests on the TF2000 timber frame building at the BRE Cardington hanger and investigating fire risks in indoor soft play areas.
Following my time at CIF I moved to Tenos Fire Safety, where I continued my fire safety engineering consultancy role. After my time at Tenos I spent some time at both BRE and Hoare Lea, progressing my fire safety engineering consultancy activities and duties including Expert Witness work. In 2019, I together with David Bostelmann and Karl Wallasch, formed Trigon.
Describe your role at Trigon Fire Safety:
In my current role as a Director of Trigon I support the general running of the business and lead the internal technical training academy for junior and senior engineers. My main role is undertaking of Expert Witness activities for clients who are in dispute resolution or litigation.
What’s a typical working day?
There is never a typical working day, every day is different and presents unique challenges. Either that be client instructions/requests, to team members looking for support and assistance, to managing or mentoring colleagues, to business development meetings, to drafting work deliverables.
What do you find most enjoyable about your job?
There are two aspects of my role that I find the most enjoyable; first is working alongside young engineers seeing their enthusiasm and passion to learn and develop within the field of fire safety engineering. The second is being presented with unique challenges from clients, allowing the team to apply fire engineering techniques, principles and innovative and unique solutions.
Describe any professional highlights or achievements:
I don’t think there is a single achievement that is a defining moment, as I have been fortunate throughout my career to work alongside accomplished project teams and impassioned clients.
A few of my personal highlights include: developing fire safety strategy for the 4th (at the time of construction) largest passenger liner in the world, assisting with the development of the fire safety arrangements for the inclusions of a new café within a 1,000 year old medieval undercroft of a royal castle and developing the fire safety arrangements for the complete refurbishment of a central London flagship department store, whilst ensuring that the business continued to trade throughout construction. I have also been lucky to support by assisting the development of revisions of Approved Document B, HTM 05-02 and various British Standards.
However, the pinnacle of my career so far is, with my colleagues, establishing Trigon in 2019, and since then enabling and supporting new young engineers to join the discipline, with the ambition to support them through to professional registration as well.
Source:
The above is an abridged version of an article written by the Institute of Fire Engineers (IFE).
You can read it in full here: IFE > Career Spotlight > James Lavender CEng MIFireE