We have appointed Senior Project Manager Shyamala Duraisingam as Director to head up a new Design Management Unit.

Shyamala, qualified as a Civil Engineer with Architecture and has worked on many large-scale international projects, most recently in Mexico City where she was Senior Design Manager for Foster + Partners on the new 750,000sq m International Airport in Mexico City. Whilst in Mexico City, she was also Director of Project Management at Turner & Townsend, PM Director responsible for Puerto Vallarta Airport with Currie & Brown and was Technical and Management Director for two renowned property developers in the City.

During her seven years at Fosters, Shyamala also worked on Tocumen international Airport in Panama City and was Senior Project Manager for 12 Apple stores across Hong Kong and China. Prior to this, she spent a short period with Zaha Hadid Architects working on a variety of projects – including the Valencia Parque Central design competition.

Before becoming a Design Manager, Shyamala was a Senior Civil and Structural Engineer for over 20 years, working for the likes of Santiago Calatrava in Valencia for 8 years and other leading engineering firms including on projects in collaboration with Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel - in Spain and Portugal.

Shyamala is an invited Lecturer at London University, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture on the Practice and Project Management module, third year MEng degree course.

As well as leading the Project and Design Management areas on our own projects, Shyamala will head up the newly formed and independent - Design Management Unit. “The Vision for this Unit is to coordinate and manage interactions between design and design related disciplines that enable project success at every stage - from concept to procurement, construction and operation,” said Shyamala.

Offering design management support to clients and Developers, as well as assistance to Project Managers, the Unit will provide specialised design management and coordination of design teams on large-scale projects and portfolios. Thus freeing Project Managers to concentrate on the commercial demands of the projects.

In addition, it will provide design management support to architects and other designers as their “Trusted Partners”, where the demands of complex projects require dedicated management of the multidisciplinary design teams and their deliverables. Ensuring alignment to the project brief and baselines.

As part of this “Trusted Partner” service and dependent on location, Design Management Unit can offer services such as Design and Set Up Manager on large international projects. This includes offering full project set up in the host country to clients and other architectural and engineering consultancies, including managing the process of finding local Architects and Engineers and enabling an effective “Stop Gap” typical between international and local teams by effectively managing the local / International interface.

On the launch of the Design Management Unit, Shyamala said: “I am tremendously excited to be responsible for growing a design management service. We aim to make it unique in its ability to combine technical experience and design management expertise, in order to render services bespoke to each project. These will carry the full weight of in-depth technical, procurement and construction understanding to arrive at integrated solutions that successfully “armour clad” the project against the typical problems during all stages of the project.”

Design Management Unit is already showcasing its full scope of services for the headquarters of a high profile confidential sports entity in the UK, being designed by Scott Brownrigg.