Peter Thomas Dunican (15 March 1918 – 18 December 1989) was a

structural engineer Structural engineers analyze, design, plan, and research List of structural elements, structural components and structural systems to achieve design goals and ensure the safety and comfort of users or occupants. Their work takes account mainly of ...

and former chairman of Ove Arup & Partners.

Life and career

Involved in Ove Arup & Partners from its early days, and becoming a partner in 1956, Peter Dunican is widely regarded as the right-hand man of

Ove Arup Sir Ove Nyquist Arup (16 April 1895 – 5 February 1988) was an English engineer who founded Arup Group Limited, a multinational corporation offering engineering, design, planning, project management, and consultant, consulting services for bu ...

, the firm's founder. In the words of Jack Zunz and Peter Hobbs, other senior partners from the firm, after his death in 1989: :"If Ove is the architect-philosopher, Peter is the builder, the doer who moulded the philosophies into workable arrangements whereby so many hundreds of talented people have come together to work under the Arup banner." Dunican became chairman of the Ove Arup Partnership, a trust which owned Ove Arup & Partners on behalf of its staff, in 1977. As senior partner at Arup from 1956, Dunican is credited with overseeing much of its growth from a single office in London in 1946 to a firm of over 15000 staff (in 2020). He also worked on many of the firms most iconic projects, including the

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Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

, the

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and others. He was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

in 1978, president of the

Institution of Structural Engineers The Institution of Structural Engineers is a British professional body for structural engineers. In 2021, it had 29,900 members operating in 112 countries. It provides professional accreditation and publishes a magazine, '' The Structural Eng ...

for 1977–78 and was appointed

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

in the 1977 New Year Honours. He died in 1989.

References

1918 births 1989 deaths Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Structural engineers Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Presidents of the Institution of Structural Engineers {{UK-engineer-stub