David Scott

About

David Scott is structural engineer and an engineering director at Laing O’Rourke, where he works on a wide range of innovative solutions for tall buildings and other major building projects. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, two of the UK’s most prestigious engineering communities.

He has written publications on fire, wind, and earthquakes. He is a past chairman of the CTBUH (2006 – 2009), during which the Council tripled in size. He has chaired numerous conferences, committees and working groups, and was most recently a co-chair of the CTBUH Wind Committee, during which term he co-authored Wind Tunnel Testing of High-Rise Buildings, published in 2012.

He comes from a multi-disciplinary and multinational background, based in Hong Kong for 15 years, followed by New York for 14 years. He moved to London in 2012. While in the US, he was Buildings Practice leader for Arup in the Americas, and was the Arup global tall building leader. He was in New York on September 11th, 2001 and witnessed the attack on the World Trade Center. Subsequently, he was part of the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) engineering team that worked at Ground Zero to assist with the search, recovery and clean-up. Following 9-11, he was extensively involved in the industry review of design standards and procedures for tall buildings in extreme events. He has authored papers on fire-induced progressive collapse, and was a reviewer of the US Government’s General Services Administration (GSA) design requirements to mitigate progressive collapse. He also worked extensively with Daniel Libeskind on the World Trade Center masterplan and his design for Freedom Tower.

His tall building experience started with Norman Foster’s landmark Hong Kong Bank Headquarters Building, followed immediately by the design of the what was then the second-tallest tower in Shanghai – the Jing An Hilton. He went on to be involved with many tall buildings around the world, comprising eight towers in South Korea, including the North East Asia Trade Tower, Incheon. Elsewhere in Asia he worked on the Cheung Kong Centre, Hong Kong; New World Tower, Shanghai; Eton Place, Dalian; Marina Bay, Singapore; and China Resources Tower, Shenzhen. He led Arup’s first building projects in China, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines. Scott’s work is not limited to tall buildings; he was the Arup project lead for the New Hong Kong Airport and Chief Structural Engineer for the Second Avenue Subway, New York. He is a graduate of Edinburgh University.