1. Our First RC Commercial Built Project
Our first Reinforced Concrete commercial built project was Alfred Road in Acton.
The design was a four-storey, plus basement, development to provide 10 residential units.
Here we are in the early days celebrating an Alfred Road site visit as Co-Founders with our first employees – Mario and Ruben – both of which are still with us today!
We’re celebrating our 10th year and have 2150 projects under our belts. We’ve come a long way since our Alfred Road project and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed the journey!
2. Our First Hotel Development
Redchurch Townhouse was our first hotel development. Several single storey buildings originally occupied the narrow and highly constrained central London site, and they were redeveloped with a four-storey hotel and a deep two-storey basement.
We were appointed at D&B stage and subsequently redesigned the concept to significantly increase useable space and address buildability concerns. The basement we designed is huge, and abutted four other properties at the boundary and so required very careful, and extensive, construction phasing and movement monitoring of the neighbouring buildings.
And as firsts go, we think this might be our first commercial and retail project to receive award recognition, with the building making it onto the shortlists for RIBA London, AIA UK Design, and Dezeen.
Since Redchurch, we’ve completed designs for a number of new hotels, hotel retrofits, as well as hotel extensions such as Brick Street.
3. Our First Significant Airspace Development
We have many clients and developers asking us to review sites and assets to see where we could maximise potential. In some instances, a vertical extension is the only solution. Bridge Street was our first significant airspace development and has helped carve a space for us to be recognised as leaders in this area.
Our Bridge Street client wanted to extend an existing 1960s two-storey retail building in the heart of Peterborough with three-storeys on top to deliver 130 residential units. The most significant challenges were upgrading the building for disproportionate collapse in the event of an explosion, and the fact the ground floor was to remain inaccessible and stay as a live supermarket throughout.
It was an exciting time in the practice as we had to get very creative. Some clever engineering and sonic testing of the piles allowed us to offer our client three structural solutions which maximised massing and useable space.
Bridge Street is an excellent example of what can be achieved when thinking outside of the box and partnering closely with a client to maximise the potential of existing buildings.
4. Our First Structural Award
In 2024, a year before SD turned 10, we won our first Structural Award. Even just to be shortlisted by the IStructE up against the greats that include Arup etc. was a huge moment for us. And then to win! Delivering buildings and spaces that people enjoy using is the ultimate goal for designers. Winning awards is the icing on the cake.
We won the Structural Award for the new head office for Mary Ward Centre. We undertook a heavy retrofit and vertical extension of a 1970s concrete-framed office building in Stratford to provide workspace, a new multi-functioning performing arts theatre, cafe, flexible teaching areas, and community spaces.
And following on from the win, we had our first article published in The Structural Engineer which focused on risk management of heavy retrofit projects with Mary Ward Centre as the case study example.
It was such an exciting time to be able to showcase our expertise, highlight and promote the excellence of our team, boost brand awareness, and build credibility through the award win and press coverage.
5. Our First Employee
SD is nothing without our incredible team. As with all companies, we’ve had ups and downs throughout the years, but the team always bands together to drive forward and enable success.
We started 10 years ago as a duo and then as work picked up, Ruben joined as our first employee. We have since steadily grown to a team of 30. During this time, we’ve moved offices a few times since our first space with other start ups in a charity backed workplace called Bathtub to Boardroom and now to our own space on Throgmorton Avenue to cater for our expansion.
We might be biased, but we’re sure we have the best team going. We’ve cherished celebrating our teams’ personal and professional achievements such as marriage, chartership, house moves, awards, panel opportunities, kids etc. And always look to reward our team as best as we can, and as often as we can too. Every year we book an away day – a chance for the team to switch off from the daily tasks and reconnect with each other. And these trips are another highlight for us, especially our first away day abroad back in 2022.
6. Our First Major Civil Engineering Project
When SD began, we offered structural engineering services only. As time went on, we expanded our team and expertise to include civil engineering services. Our first major civil engineering project was Clichy Estate.
Here we were appointed for the pre-planning and developed concept design of the redevelopment of an existing estate to provide a new mosque, a residential development of 450 homes, and the site-wide drainage design involving landscaping to create a SuDS inclusive scheme with conveyance swales, attenuation tanks, and biodiverse rain gardens where possible.
It was so exciting to watch our superb civils team flex their creative muscles to deliver such a complex and rewarding scheme, and it paved the way for the breadth of redevelopment work they do now.
7. Our First Competition Win
Hastings West Hill will redevelop and upgrade the current café. This project is our first competition win.
Our design features an exposed timber structure which will be supported on timber stilts to cater for the steeply sloping site location. A funicular railway pops up into the bottom of the current cafe and so construction will be phased to work around and protect this Grade II listed tunnel.
We’ve had a couple of site visits and DTM’s already and very much looking forward to seeing how the design develops.
8. Our First SD Logo
When you start a company, you need a name. And with that name comes a logo. Something people will see and hopefully recognise. Well, here’s our first ever logo and its development to the version we have now.
That first logo was created by Andy and Mike using Clip Art one day in Andy’s lounge. The very first iteration was orange! But after a few colour trials, purple came out the winner and has remained our brand colour ever since.
We underwent a big brand revamp in 2021, working to refine our brand and update our website to reflect what SD had grown into.
Through many discussions and iterations, we landed on what is now the revamped SD brand, colourway, typeface, and website. And as we explain in no.6, our offer had expanded from structures to include civils also and so we decided to change SD Structures to SD Engineers to encompass both services.
Our website and new branding launched in 2023 and in our tenth year, we’ve been shortlisted for the Best Brand at the Archiboo Awards 2025. We’re really thrilled with how everything turned out and looking forward to celebrating (whatever the outcome!) at the awards night in November.
9. Our First Business Blunder
When we first started out, we tried having our engineers do all their own 3D modelling and drawing, like architects do, rather than having a separate modelling team.
Initially this worked well, but over time we realised we had underestimated how specialist a highly skilled technician was. It restricted learning for the engineers, drawings were inconsistent and didn’t adhere to our brand guidelines, and we very quickly realised there was a reason the rest of the industry had moved away from this way of working.
This would be the first of many things we have tried and eventually moved away from for one reason or another.
We have learned that the occasional failure of what seemed a great idea is just part of the journey when growing a business. What’s important is to listen to the team around you when they say things aren’t working, and involve them in the solution.
10. Our First Industry Resource
There have been many greats in our industry sharing invaluable knowledge and experiences to better the world of engineering.
Through our quest to deliver less environmentally harmful designs, we have focused efforts on lowering embodied carbon of structures. We realised that there were some quick and easy alternatives to “typical” domestic extension designs that could save embodied carbon, and in most cases save our clients’ money too – a win-win!
We started compiling a study of the various options as an internal guide, particularly for our younger engineers. But as we delved further into the solutions and analysis, we realised the information we had compiled could be pretty useful to the rest of the industry too. And so that’s why we have produced our first industry resource, the Carbon Toolkit, as a readily available document for use by our peers and colleagues. Download available soon.
