IN FOCUS - Meet Mark Crawford - the new CIBSE ANZ Chair with a company that my friend’s father ran. I soon realised that I was well suited to commissioning as I enjoyed making things work and solving problems. Two years later I went free-lance and operated a successful commissioning management business for the next ten years.
Mark Crawford, newly appointed CIBSE ANZ Chair and Director of MCL, discusses projects he is currently working on, his tips and tricks for working effectively from home, plus how he is steering the CIBSE ANZ Chair in 2020 and beyond. Tell us a little bit about what you do, where you come from, noteworthy projects you worked on and career highlights, personal hobbies/ interests. I was born in Kent in southeast England and grew up in a little village (Cliffe) in the north of the county. Whizzing forward a few years I graduated in electrical and electronic engineering (B.Eng (Hons)) from Loughborough University in 1992. As there was a bit of a recession on at that time I could not get a graduate job. So I took a job as a commissioning engineer
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This took me to 2004. I was working on the Mellon Bank project in Blackfriars when I had a beer or two with the lead engineering consultant, who happened to be a Kiwi. We soon decided that we should go into business together (may have been influenced by the beer?). We soon set up GAP Engineering and rented a small office near the Monument in central London. My Kiwi partner, Greg, used to work for a wellrespected and growing NZ consultancy called Beca, Carter, Hollings and Ferner Limited. They found out about our little set up and approached us with an interesting offer to become the Beca London office. After some serious consideration, we agreed. This went well and some two and a bit years later I was offered the opportunity to spend a year in the Auckland office with my family. Timing was right for us (we had to consider schooling arrangements for my two children), so we rented out our house and took off for the antipodes. We all loved living in NZ, so when our letting agent in the UK advised that someone had expressed an interest in buying our house we decided to stay. We have now been in NZ for over 13 years. For most of that time I continued to work for Beca but in mid-2019 I went back to being a free-lance engineer. I now operate a limited company, MCL, providing commissioning management and mission critical engineering services to the industry. Projects I have been involved with over the years include: • UK Waterloo International Terminal
• The British Library
• Guy’s Hospital Various commercial offices, such as Paddington Central, Credit Suisse, Barclays Bank and Mellon Bank
• Various pharmaceutical establishments, such as Glaxo Smithkline, Merke, Sharpe & Dohme and Millennium Pharmaceutical in Cambridge
