Helen McGarry

Helen is an Associate Engineer and Sustainability Lead at Design ID. Her role combines leading sustainability across the practice and supporting clients in achieving their goals, while continuing to deliver engineering projects and lead project teams. Since joining in 2024, she has championed sustainability across our projects — embedding it not as an add-on, but as a core design principle.

With over 12 years of international design experience, Helen has worked at Arup (Dublin, Hong Kong, and London) and at Expedition Engineering (London) before joining Design ID’s Hillsborough office. She is a Chartered Member of both the Institution of Structural Engineers and Engineers Ireland.

Helen brings a pragmatic, technical, and creative approach to engineering design and research, developed through her work on a wide range of projects — from small-scale existing buildings and timber structures to major infrastructure. She is motivated by tackling challenges that deliver useful, worthwhile outcomes which positively enhance the built environment and society.

In recent years, her work has focused on low-carbon innovation consultancy for UK infrastructure clients, particularly the rapid decarbonisation of the concrete industry. She is an active member of the UK Low Carbon Concrete Group and is responsible for the annual updates to the LCCG Market Benchmark. In 2024, she co-authored the Concrete chapter in Materials: An Environmental Primer (RIBA Books).

Helen has experience applying Circular Economy principles and Regenerative Thinking to building projects and is currently exploring their potential to help the construction industry better evaluate and enhance its environmental and social impacts.