Architecture
Reverse engineering and development
Reverse engineering and development of new cladding in line with post Grenfell regulations
Our client, a prominent engineering company in London, have been at the heart of innovation in fire safe cladding since the Grenfell tragedy in 2017.
A part of their workload has been the analysis of existing tall buildings in and around the city of London and the development of strategies and cladding types to efficiently and cost effectively bring these towers up to the new standards required under fire regulations. Each building is different and has its own unique problems, in addition, all the buildings are occupied. They are working for multiple Housing Associations, Developers and Private Building Owners on schemes at various stages of testing, removal and replacement.
This is a fast-moving and constantly changing area of work, as the Government are constantly introducing new guidelines and advice. They are also “clarifying” existing legislation which has been interpreted by the industry for many years to provide acceptable solutions, but these solutions are now not acceptable. This has a major impact on existing buildings because it has the same effect as a retrospective change to the building regulations.
This is an area in which a lot of engineers are trying to develop concepts and ideas to safely help tenants who may be residing in tall buildings, however, due to constant changes there is no blueprint for success.
We were able to work with the client to identify the baseline of knowledge in both the sector and within their own company on a project by project basis to assess the levels of R&D on each project. This led to a successful claim based on the new and innovative solutions our client developed.
Ben Thompson
Ben is one of our senior sector specialists leading the Engineering team. He conducts the technical interviews with product developers, software developers and manufacturing clients to ensure the details of their work is understood and all areas that have potential to claim a tax credit through the R&D scheme are identified. During his career at Wilby Jones, Ben has been involved in over 250 R&D claims and helped businesses claim across a range of industries. Over the course of the last year, his engineering team claimed over £6 million for our clients and aim to always deliver high quality tax advice. Before starting work at Wilby Jones, Ben gained a first-class honours degree from the University of Lincoln, with his dissertation focusing on computational traffic flow analysis. Having joined our graduate scheme in 2020, he is now an ATT qualified tax advisor and aims to complete the ATT/CTA pathway to become a full chartered tax advisor within the next year. He enjoys the variety of the work undertaken by each of his clients, and learning about new concepts directly from the professionals researching them and innovating within their industry every day. Whether talking to aerospace professionals or nuclear engineers, there is always something new to learn and it is exciting to see the trends across all industries appear during conversations with clients. A keen guitarist, Ben teaches in the Norfolk area and has played for the last 18 years – Look out for him playing in several local bands around the city.