MEP Awards: Michael Slessor wins Young Engineer

Michael Slessor, named Young Engineer of the Year at the 2011 MEP Awards.

Michael Slessor, a 25-year-old University of Cambridge graduate working for Buro Happold, was chosen as the Young Engineer of the Year at Wednesday’s MEP Awards 2011 in Dubai.

The win came on the back of Slessor’s sterling work for the Estidama initiative, the judges said. They highlighted his talent, enthusiasm and commitment as the deciding factors in their decision to vote for him to receive the award.

“I’m immensely surprised but immensely delighted to win this award,” he told MEP Middle East after the presentation.

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“I’ve had a really good year working on a lot of different stuff, such as Estidama. I’ve been helping out, writing the code and developing implementations. I’ve also been working on other projects such as design laboratories and media zones – on the technical and policy side,” he added.

Although based in Dubai for the last two years and six months, Slessor has also worked extensively in Abu Dhabi with the Estidama initiative.

“I think that’s the main thing which helped me achieve this award. It’s the main one in the region and it has helped me develop my skills rapidly,” he explained.

“Technically for sure, but also in terms of my understanding of the region itself,” he added.

While he praised the impact Estidama was having in helping to create a viable rating system, Slessor said that he would like to urge other GCC members to take up their own rating systems as opposed to adopting the USA code.

“That will be more difficult to do in other parts of the GCC countries, but I feel that it is something that needs to be done,” he said.

“I’d really like to take my experience of Abu Dhabi and take it somewhere like Saudi Arabia,” he concluded.