Mark Jonathan Lawler
Partner, Edinburgh Civil/Structural

8 Coates Crescent,
Edinburgh EH3 7BY
tel: 0131 226 3331
fax: 0131 226 2563

I'm mainly responsible for running the Edinburgh Structural Department alongside Hamish. This typically involves day-to-day department and people management, marketing, cost and fee management for my projects, preparation of concept designs, supervising/mentoring, detailed design work, and structural design Certification. The work can be very varied, at times very intensive, and I probably derive most satisfaction from problem solving.

Other responsibilities include overall management of the Practice IT systems (I try to keep that one quiet!) and the Practice Library, and I am responsible for overall management of our Edinburgh Admin' Team (they actually manage me!).

Since January 2006 I've been a member of the Scottish Registration Board managing the SER Structural Certification Scheme in Scotland. It's been really interesting, giving me an insight into how other Practices operate, and helping to keep us up to speed with all of the latest developments in the Scheme specifically, and in the industry generally. It's also brought home to me just how important a role the engineer plays in the design and construction processes.

There's never enough time in the day to do all the things I love doing. I truly do enjoy what I do for a day job, but I also have an active life outside of work.

I'm from a big family, we're all still close, so that's really important to me.

Otherwise, my main interests include salsa dancing, fly fishing and hill walking. Jules (my better half) and I found salsa after a trip to Cuba in 2005, we've been dancing ever since and now go out two or three times a week. We also got into hill walking when training for a charity hike in Nepal in 2003/4, and found so many places in Scotland that we didn't know existed. And I've always been fanatical about fly fishing. It's one of the few things you can do where nothing else gets in the way – it's just you, your surroundings and the fish! Other than that, I enjoy curling in the winter, an occasional game of golf, and I'm regularly to be found in the kitchen with an apron on cooking up a feast for family and friends.