David Beauchamp

David Beauchamp was born in Auckland New Zealand in 1936. He spent much of his boyhood in Picton before going to Canterbury University College (CUC) where he completed a B.E. (Civil) in 1958. In his final year at university, he captained the CUC athletic team that won the Lovelock Relay in Dunedin – the relay held each year to commemorate Jack Lovelock winning the 1500 m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

After working for the New Zealand Ministry of Works in Fiji and Wellington he came to Melbourne at the end of 1963, initially working for Civil & Civic and then for John Connell & Associates until 1969, apart from one year in London working for Mott Hay & Anderson in their bridge design section.
In March 1969 he started his own structural and civil consultancy practice, designing the structures for a wide range of buildings, while working with many of Melbourne’s leading architects. More recently he has specialised in forensic and heritage engineering, writing reports on building failures and on historic structures, including the Murtoa Grain Store, the Victorian Houses of Parliament, the world heritage-listed Exhibition Buildings, Princes Bridge, Barwon Heads Bridge and the 1867 Ellerslie Bridge.

In 1973, David Beauchamp, George Tibbits and Miles Lewis were awarded the R.A.I.A. (Victorian Chapter) Robin Boyd Environmental Medal for their report Urban Renewal Carlton an Analysis. This report helped stop the Housing Commission from demolishing 80 hectares of the historic inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton.
He was the first chairman of the Council for the Historic Environment, an inaugural member of the Victorian Heritage Council and a member of the National Trust’s Bridges Committee.

Currently he is a member of ICOMOS, the APT, the Institution of Engineers Australia, the Institution of Civil Engineers, and chair of Engineering Heritage Victoria.

Paper: John Harry Grainger, Engineer and Architect