Mark Shirburne-Davies becomes contractor鈥檚 head of architecture and carries out design policy review

Laing O鈥橰ourke has poached a former design director of BAA for its newly created post of architectural director.

Mark Shirburne-Davies has been carrying out a review of the contractor鈥檚 design procedures and will present his findings to Ray O鈥橰ourke, its chairman, and Tony Douglas, its chief operating officer, later this month.

It is expected that he will recommend that basic design work carried out by external consultants be brought in-house.

Shirburne-Davies said: 鈥淲e want to make the process easier. We still get huge inefficiencies over the design, which often sees the company doing them again.鈥�

Laing O鈥橰ourke鈥檚 education business will pilot the system from the new year. Shirburne-Davies recommended that its projects use more standardised designs. He said: 鈥淣ot every school has to be designed from scratch. There have to be some common components across the board.鈥�

Douglas brought Shirburne-Davies across from developer First Base, where he was development director, at the end of October but the move was kept secret while he completed his review.

Douglas and Shirburne-Davies worked together at BAA, where the latter was development and design director until the autumn of 2007. Douglas had left his position as managing director of Heathrow airport to join Laing O鈥橰ourke earlier that year.

Prior to his stint at the airport operator, Shirburne-Davies spent 14 years at Terry Farrell and Partners. Among his projects were the Kowloon Airport in Hong Kong, on which he was the project architect, and Paddington Basin in west London.

Shirburne-Davies said: 鈥淟aing O鈥橰ourke needs to get modern methods of construction embedded early on so designs reflect that.鈥�