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, and I've recently taken on running the Glasgow Structural Department. This means spending a couple of days each week in Glasgow. The travelling has been a bit of a culture shock, especially after this past winter's severe weather disruption, but otherwise a change of scenery is always a good thing. A typical day for me would involve people management, marketing, cost and fee management, preparation of concept designs, supervising/mentoring, detailed design work, and structural design Certification. The job 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. As part of my responsibilities here I've presented a short paper to the industry at large on Certification of Timber Framed buildings, and I'm involved in other training events promoted by SER.

There's never enough time in the day to do all the things I love doing, I truly 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 really close and that's very important to me. Otherwise, my main interests include salsa dancing, fly fishing and hill walking. I found salsa after a trip to Cuba in 2005 and have been dancing ever since. I now go out dancing two or three times a week. I also got into hill walking when training for a charity hike in Nepal in 2003/4, and found so many places in Scotland that I 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. 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.