Iwona has a background in public health and mechanical engineering in Poland, Dublin and London. She has delivered a wide variety of projects including high rise, commercial, healthcare, educational, hotel, life sciences and laboratories, retail and residential buildings.

Iwona’s wide range of experience over two disciplines and various countries informs her understanding of project needs and how to achieve innovative, cost-effective and sustainable solutions.

Iwona reflects on her pride in engineering as a family tradition, the importance of public health or hydraulics to our society and her innovative work on London’s mixed use St Pancras Campus development.

What inspired you to become an engineer?

I followed a family tradition, that began with my grandfather who was an electrical engineer. He was a technical director of the state electrical power network company covering the south of Poland. He oversaw the rolling out of electrification in rural areas. I still have a paper letter to him from famous polish poet Jalu Kurek saying thank you for the connection to power.

Why hydraulics engineering

My studies covered general building engineering, but I found public health services most fundamental and essential among others, which is why I wrote my master thesis about micro pollution in drinking water.

When I started working as a building services engineer, I naturally gravitated towards services involving water and found the logic and precision of public health services very attractive.

What’s your career highlight project?

London’s St Pancras Campus features a shell and core for mixed used residential and office buildings. The development also includes 5 independent industry units, 2 retail units and a café.

Our client wanted the project to be a flagship environmental design for rejuvenating the city centre of London. It has been the most comprehensive public health package I have ever worked on. On top of the usual scope, it includes:

  • Three different rainwater drainage systems (attenuated, traditional gravity and siphonic)
  • Rainwater treatment system (collected from trafficable road)
  • Non-potable, rainwater harvesting system used for irrigation
  • Centralised hot water system heated up by air source heat pumps (a first for NDY London)
  • Drainage associated with a tree planted above the car park.

This project provided an opportunity for me to face new elements within the design.

While there are existing British standards on the subject, the complete design required lots of market research and reaching out to specialists, other consultants and even suppliers for advice and ideas.

Because of the complexity of the design we rationalised the services layout to a degree which is usually not necessary. It is a creative process, and I found myself quite often questioning decisions I had previously taken for granted. It was a chance for me to thrive in a highly collaborative and innovative environment with solid support provided by NDY.

Tell us about the hydraulics engineering on this project.

A key challenge was the rainwater attenuation system, including roof attenuation (blue roof) and an above ground attenuation tank. The essence of attenuation is to mediate between unpredictable weather and the very specific capacity of the London sewage network, which needs discussions with other teams.

What was unusual about this was the level of coordination required and the number of consultants involved (the architect, structural engineer, civil engineer and manufacturers). This process required us taking the lead, as the public health consultant we had the most knowledge and understanding of the issue in hand.

It took more than 10 meetings to arrive at a coordinated design solution. The campus roof areas evolved a few times as part of design development, which made it even more challenging, and we took it on with agility.

It was also the first project after London’s lockdown began, which was a challenge in its own way. Given the complexity of the project and the amount of coordination and meetings required, we needed to learn how to communicate using online tools (which seems totally normal now!).

What innovative new approaches are you seeing when it comes to hydraulics engineering?

We are already using smart analytical software which develops as we speak.

I think there is great scope for improving efficiencies by using smart software tools, or enhanced modelling and leveraging the power of BIM. The first step will be focused on object-oriented programming tools where the systems modelled in BIM not only look like their real life equivalents but also behave like them.

I believe that in time, repetitive tasks will be automated and our work will be focused on creative tasks which cannot be done by computers (yet).

If you’ve worked across regions or countries, and/or across Tetra Tech operating units, can you tell us about the key similarities and differences you’ve encountered when it comes to hydraulics engineering and your projects?

I have worked in three countries. I can see interesting differences in the approach to water supply.

Ireland, which is very similar to the United Kingdom (UK) and uses the same British standards and similarly to the UK requires cold water storage. The exception is a cold water tap in the kitchen sink, which is considered to be a point of drinking water, has to be connected directly to the network. This is driven by the view that storing water increases contamination risk.

Poland is, in some respects, quite different. There is no cold water storage required at all, and in fact it is not permitted for residential use. Cold water supply is provided directly from the network, which is designed to cope with this demand. The view is that stagnant water is not suitable for use in a residential setting.

Another interesting difference between Poland and the UK is the separation between rainwater and wastewater networks. The storm water and foul water in Poland are completely separated, and it would be illegal to connect both systems.

It might be that the infrastructure in London was built earlier, before the need to separate the two systems became evident.

Where do you see the future of hydraulics engineering heading?

There will be reduced water consumption and increased water reuse.

The big question is how the emergence of AI will affect water management in general but also our work as public health consultants. I can imagine an AI solution could be integrated into BMS systems, with BMS learning about user behaviour and optimising the system accordingly. For example, you can adapt the amount of heated water to user behaviour.

I do not know how, but what if we can be more precise in predicting weather changes?