Joining Buro Happold in 2014, Alain drives Buro Happold’s reputation as a global leader in using technology to power design. He champions our global technology initiatives that underpin our client relationships, project performance and our scalable and resilient business platforms. Together these enable us to attract the very best talent and digital skills and retain them within the practice.
A technology agitator, Alain leads our Technology Strategy Board. Championing the computational upskilling of our people, digital twins, and advancing BIM and GIS workflows within the practice. Within the industry, he is a driving force behind the digital transformation of the built environment as an advocate of systemic change and improvement.
Alain’s work at Buro Happold has allowed us to institutionalise BIM across our global practice and provide the very best service for our clients. His expansive experience and understanding of BIM transformation and implementation spans the Architecture Engineering Construction and Owner (AECO) Value chain which provides invaluable insights for our clients.
An aeronautical engineer by trade, he holds a master’s in Fluid Mechanics Numerical Simulation and a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Manchester.
Despite the progress made in design computation with BIM and generative components, our industry continues to grapple with fragmented workflows and proprietary data formats.
Al Fisher will provide an update on BHoM (Building and Habitats object Model), the open-source framework used by Buro Happold to support its firm-wide design computation and digital collaboration. He will present the BHoM’s unique federated object model, its emphasis on composability, extensibility, and “no black boxes” transparency, and how it is used at scale in a large engineering practice.
Robert Aish will present the progress made in the field of Design Computation and a new generation of Design Languages: the successors to Design Script and Generative Components. He will position the BHoM frameworks within that journey, and how they enable more abstract design representations, which in turn allow the creation of derivative design representations that can be more coordinated, collaborative, and composable.
As a wrap-up, Alain Waha will summarise the BHoM framework’s potential to unlock advanced AI-driven design processes and address critical industry challenges, from achieving Net Zero to industrialising construction.