James Hepburn
Principal, Building Services Engineering and Environmental Studio

James is a principal and leads engineering teams on projects across all sectors, working closely with the architects to design sustainable buildings.

He ensures that buildings work as passively as possible, questioning why plant and equipment is required before designing it in. He is an advocate of the Soft Landings process and enjoys collaborating with designers, contractors and end users to ensure sustainable and cost effective environmental design strategies are adopted.

James has extensive experience of refurbishment projects including historic and listed buildings, as well as new build interventions on sensitive sites. As well as large scale expertise, James has engineering masterplan experience across campus-type sites and has led teams to deliver site-wide infrastructure projects and the detailed designed of high capacity energy centres.

James has a strong track record in education projects including the BREEAM award winning UCL Student Centre and the Enterprise Centre at University of East Anglia. Healthcare projects include the Pears Building for Royal Free London and UCL, housing the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, a world-class research centre into some of the world’s most serious diseases. He led the practice’s building services team on the emergency transformation of the NHS Nightingale Hospital at London’s ExCeL Centre.