Forty years of getting the boring things right.
Diagrid Engineering was founded in 1986 to do one thing well: tell people the truth about their buildings. That has not changed. What has changed is that we can now model in an afternoon what once took a fortnight of hand calculation, and we spend the time we save on thinking rather than arithmetic.
Why we are called Diagrid
A diagrid carries load through a triangulated skin rather than a forest of internal columns. It uses roughly a fifth less steel than an equivalent frame, and it puts the structure where you can see it. That is the whole practice in one word: efficient, legible, honest about how it works.
It applies just as much to a Victorian terrace as to a tower. Understand where the load actually goes, and the intervention gets smaller, cheaper and less disruptive almost every time.
How we work
Less material, not more
The greenest beam is the one you did not need. We start by asking whether the existing structure can be retained, and only then design the addition. Across 2025 our schemes averaged 22% below the industry benchmark for embodied carbon.
Two engineers, always
Nothing leaves the office without an independent check by an engineer who did not do the design. It costs us a day and it is the reason we have never had a structural failure or a professional indemnity claim.
Plain English on top
Every report opens with a page that a homeowner can read without a degree. The Eurocode workings sit behind it for the people who need them. Both audiences get served properly.
Revit and STAAD.Pro, used properly
Every project, from a single beam to a thirty-storey frame, is built as a three-dimensional model in Revit and analysed in STAAD.Pro. It means clashes are found on screen rather than on site, quantities are real rather than estimated, and we can test three structural options in the time it used to take to check one.
About the practice
Questions we get from clients who are choosing between engineers.
How large is the practice?+
Thirty-one engineers and technicians in one Paddington office. Large enough to carry a commercial frame, small enough that the engineer who visits your site is the one who signs the calculations.
Do you take on small residential jobs?+
More than half our work is domestic. A single beam is treated with the same process as a tower (survey, model, independent check) because the consequences of getting it wrong are just as serious for the people living there.
What areas do you cover?+
Greater London and the Home Counties for site-based work, and the whole of England and Wales for design-only commissions where a local surveyor provides the measured information.
Is sustainability an extra service?+
No. Embodied carbon is reported on every scheme as standard, at no additional fee. It is simply part of describing what a structure costs.