SOCOTEC Engineering Conference returns for successful London edition

Stephen Kavanagh, Director of Engineering for SOCOTEC UK & Ireland, opened the day with a keynote speech, highlighting the vast growth experienced this year. He also touched on the ongoing investment in staff, with training, apprenticeships and sponsoring PhD students on the agenda, as well as promotions for several key staff across the business.

Stephen also touched on digital innovation, pointing to SOCOTEC’s in-house AI tools provided by the Digital team as central to how the business is evolving its ways of working.

Eddy Khoury, Director of Fire Engineering, reported impressive revenue growth of the Fire Engineering Team of 30% this year, which was supported by the addition of a number of engineers to the team. This brings the total staff to 39 engineers.

Ashish Kirori, Associate Director of Fire Engineering, gave some updates on the makeup of the team, with several graduates, apprentices and other positions strengthening the team. Ashish also gave an update on the new Milton Keynes office due to open at the end of the month.

The wider SOCOTEC Engineering Team has experienced great regional growth in the last year, too, something which both Wayne Somanna and Humza Khan, discussed at great length. Wayne, Associate Director for Fire Engineering for SOCOTEC Ireland, described the investment into the island of Ireland as massive, from the establishment of the Dublin office, launch of the new SOCOTEC Ireland website and an uptake in recruitment.

Humza heads up the operations in Northern England, from SOCOTEC’s central Manchester office. He tracked the growth since 2023, when the team was just a handful of engineers, to the present day with triple the number of staff, and a robust business plan in place through to 2030.

Fire Research was described as underpinning much of the wider work being done across Fire Engineering, with Accessibility and Egressibility highlighted too as being a strong potential growth area, given how the EU’s ageing population will impact market demand.

SOCOTEC Fire Safety Practice (FSP) gave an in-depth introduction to their new service offerings and detailed growth the team had undertaken over the last 12 months, with Wayne Neville, and Stacey Wright, Technical and Operations Director and Commercial Manager respectively within FSP presenting.

Humza and Oscar Wiffen, an Apprentice Engineer, then combined forces to deliver two different perspectives on the challenges faced with the production of Building Safety Cases, from a Fire Engineering and Structural side of things, respectively, discussing the lessons gained from such an activity.

Principal Façade Engineer Taljinder Hayre’s update on Building Envelope work, included how to address the brand-new PAS 9980:2026 standard, which was only enforced last month.

Nick Harper, Managing Director of the Building & Real Estate division, gave a speech to attendees in the afternoon, thanking them for their important work over the previous 12 months.

The assembled audience was then treated to a series of case studies across the remainder of the afternoon, on topics as diverse as Smoke Control, Data Centres, Evacuation Lifts and Battery Energy Storage Systems, amongst others.

After the day component of the conference, there was an evening dinner and drinks, allowing colleagues, who usually only meet online, to socialise in person and compare their findings from the day.