5 minutes with … Ashwin Halaria at Symmetrys

2023-10-19T06:00:00

The firm’s associate director on the incident that made him want to be an engineer, the vital importance of material reuse and why his mother will always be his role model

Why did you choose construction as a career?

My parents ran a small hardware store and they renovated properties in the evenings and at weekends, so I have always been exposed to the built environment. There was, however, one defining moment:

One day a fire broke out at the shop roof, three storeys up. As the fire brigade were putting the fire out, the water poured inside, destroying the stock. We had buckets to catch it but it was coming through fast, and we kept being asked to get out of the shop.

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