The story
Founded by Edmund Happold in 1976.1
Buro Happold was founded on 1 May 1976, with its first office on Gay Street in Bath, United Kingdom. The firm started with eight partners:
The King's Office, Council of Ministers and Majlis Al Shura (KOCOMMAS), Central Government Complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was the firm's first major design project in 1976. Initially, Buro Happold offered only structural engineering consultancy, with a particular strength in lightweight structures, but in 1977 it added civil engineering and geotechnical engineering and in 1978 building services engineering. In 1982, Buro Happold started to work with Future Tents Ltd (FTL) on a variety of temporary and recreational structures. The firms combined their operations in 1992, but split again in 1997.
In 1983, Buro Happold opened an office in Riyadh, and has since opened offices around the UK and internationally:
By 1993, Buro Happold had 130 employees and eight partners. In 1998, this had grown to 300 employees and 12 partners, while in 2000 with over 500 employees the partnership was increased to 23. In 2006, the partnership stood at 25 with over 1,400 employees and 14 offices. Due to this growth and the addition of so many different services, the company was restructured in 2003 to consist of multi-disciplinary teams of engineers, each with structural, mechanical and electrical engineers supported by specialist consulting groups.
In 2005, Buro Happold launched Happold Consulting, a management and overseas development consultancy with expertise in the construction sector, and Happold Media, a subsidiary offering graphic design and media development services.
One of its specialist consultancy services is the fire consultancy group, FEDRA, and software development group SMART which worked with The University of Sheffield to develop Vulcan software, widely used throughout the fire engineering industry. SMART also develops Buro Happold's in-house software Tensyl, a non-linear finite element analysis and patterning program for fabric structures, and people flow modelling software. Also notable is its group COSA, which undertakes computational modelling and analysis and the Sustainability and Alternative Technologies Group.
In 2007, Buro Happold became a limited liability partnership, and in 2008 appointed 18 new partners. In 2018, the practice appointed an additional 13 partners.
As of 2019, it had 87 partners and over 2,500 employees.
From Wikipedia’s article on Buro Happold, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4