Lyall Holmes

Early years: 1920 to 1947

Holmes was born in Wellington on 16 October 1920 to Ivan Milo and Agnes Hay (née Lyall). He attended Wellington College (New Zealand) from 1934 to 1938. He then started engineering studies at Victoria University College in Wellington in 1939 and transferred to Canterbury University College in Christchurch in 1940 where he completed a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) in 1942.

For the next four years Holmes lectured in civil engineering; his areas of expertise were Hydraulics, the design and theory of structures, and estimates and contracts. He was keenly interested in the standard of engineering education and was described as a "tower of strength" by his former student Robert Park, who went on to become a world-renowned earthquake engineer.

From academic to consultant: 1947 to 1956

In February 1945, he was awarded a Post-graduate Travelling Scholarship in Engineering, which he took up two years later. In May 1947, he boarded the SS Mahana to work his passage as a deck boy to England. In the interim, he had co-designed with Paul Pascoe a house in Christchurch for his widowed mother and had married Helen Jobberns, the elder daughter of Professor George Jobberns, the first chair of the Geography Department at Canterbury College.

In London, Holmes landed a job as one of its first employees at the new London-based civil and structural engineering consultancy, Ove Arup and Partners, known for its work with modern architects, its designing of unusual structures and its development of new structural techniques and materials.

In June 1952 the family boarded the R.M.S. Orontes, having made appointments at ports along the way for Holmes to receive treatment.

When Holmes returned to the university in 1952 he was initially successful in juggling his university lecturing work with private commissions but by the mid 1950s his private work had begun to dominate and he was told by Harry Hopkins, Chair of Engineering, that it was time to choose. Holmes chose private practice and in 1956, at age 35, established what is now known as Holmes Consulting Group. Two years later he was diagnosed with angina.