William Culver

In my current role as Design Manager I am responsible and accountable for successful delivery of all design elements related to Shell UK’s multi year EV Destination Recharge programme. Having many years experience working with the petroleum industry I was selected for this role having done much of the early design standardization for Shell UK EV chargers on their petrol forecourts & having designed the charging infrastructure since its introduction. The new position required me to learn new skills & take a more managerial role. I’ve maintained & grown my technical knowledge in installing both HV and LV electric vehicle charging infrastructure & I act as a keystone between architectural practices & Shell while ensuring consistency, standardization & coordination.

Shell UK Design Team Lead for Shell Destination Recharge .

I am responsible for:

• The complete management of external architectural resource which includes multiple architects & turnkey contractors for the entire nationwide programme (2022 & 2023)
• I chair a weekly design call with Shell stakeholders & designers to ensure that key milestones are met for the entire design process. This includes feasibility layout sign off, tender stage drawings, construction stage drawings and as-built detailed review.
• Responsible for delivering the entire programme on time by ensuring key design milestones are met and to meet KPI targets
• I develop all of the design standards, maintain an in-house library of BIM assets which are fully managed, all of the construction details & ensure this is fed upstream to Shell GIDS and downstream to existing and newly onboarded design resource.
• Weekly meetings reporting on design to the Client’s business development and network planning teams

I play a vital role:

• I am the innovation center of our team having my finger on the pulse of both design and delivery – I have architected new information tracking, Power BI reporting & am responsible for both communicating and innovating on process for Artelia on Destination Recharge
• Designing and maintaining the entire construction programme & resourcing at the very start of the process.
• Architecting of the information trackers & designing the Power BI reporting for the entire programme
• I work with international teams (Artelia Group) to facilitate international BIM standards & attend multiple international seminars to both share our UK design innovation and learn what other markets are doing.
• I am a key driver of design innovation & regularly go beyond my daily duties to deliver value add to the Client, having completely several successful projects such as 4D BIM presentation, point cloud survey case study, CGI visualisations, animations and presentations for Shell UKs own upstream tender process

During my tenure with the Shell UK Design Team, I dedicated three fruitful years to Artelia UK. Within this role, I managed a range of design responsibilities, including steering feasibility stage designs for significant projects such as all KDRB and new sales buildings, integral to Shell UK's petroleum forecourt offerings.

Global Standards: A notable aspect of my engagement was the facilitation of weekly design meetings with Shell stakeholders, embedding Artelia's design acumen into the heart of the process. Serving as a bridge between Artelia and third-party Architects, I ensured coherence across diverse architect teams. I meticulously crafted and maintained design documentation using Building Information Modeling (BIM) processes and my work has found its way into Shell global design standards (GIDS).

Continuous Improvement: I also contributed to continuous improvement by refining designs based on lessons learned from prior implementations, sharing these insights with downstream designers. Additionally, I harnessed my skills in visual communication, creating compelling CGI imagery, immersive walkthroughs, and engaging videos. Notably, my concept work for the Shell Fulham electric vehicle charging hub garnered recognition in respected publications like Forecourt Trader and inspired the built asset.

Net Zero Carbon & EV: In the realm of forward-looking initiatives, I actively participated in the evolving landscape as the UK advances toward net-zero carbon emissions. My involvement in Electric Vehicle (E.V.) charging projects included the development and upkeep of Shell UK's standard E.V. Charging bay and power cabinet compound designs. A reflection of my commitment to steering design strategies toward the emerging E.V. landscape

I set up my own Architectural practice in 2005, initially focused on the residential sector but I quickly found my way back to the commercial and petroleum industry having maintained good relationships with former clients and colleagues.

Sainsburys I worked as sole BIM modeler and designer on 23 petroleum forecourt projects for Sainsburys and bootstrapped their transition to a BIM workflow in 2014-15. This involved creation of a suite of curated petroleum forecourt BIM assets as well as authoring their PAS1192-2&3 compliance documentation to bring them to BIM Level 2. I also helped them integrate with their own main store team who were further ahead with their BIM transition platforms. This involved programming proprietary web based BIM technologies and APIs where I developed key programming skills.

Other notable work I have worked with a number of residential architects to provide CAD support & draughting services. For 3 years I focused solely on delivering CGI Illustrations to clients with difficulties achieving planning permission by better communicating design through 3D architectural visualization. I developed a passion for technical artistry, cinematography and photography which lead to collaboration on a computer game as an CGI environment artist in 2016. I also worked on various Virtual Reality projects that utilized Unreal Engine 4 & realtime rendering technologies in the same year that VR headsets first came to market. In 2016 I contributed C++ code to Blender Institute, an open source 3D software suite where I was the first person to integrate the then new HTC Vive Virtual reality headset into the software

I funded & lead a small startup company focused on helping Architectural practices transition from CAD to BIM workflows & to provide bootstrap asset libraries. I had a passion to bring BIM to mainstream adoption following the Governments 2016 Level 2 target but ultimately had little success working with smaller practices. I learned a lot through the failure however.

I started my career as a CAD Draughtsman apprentice here and left as design lead. It was a petroleum & commercial specialist architectural firm

Total Oil UK I contributed to over 400 architectural projects, (design lead for 50+) producing designs for new and modified petroleum forecourts ranging from installing vapour return connections on tank vents to full knock down and rebuild (KDRB) petrol stations over the course of my 8 years here.

Railtrack UK I worked with a team to deliver railway infrastructure upgrade designs during a particularly troublesome time for the railway industry. Projects focused on diesel safety. I also provided CGI imagery for customer image (graffiti removal) & 3D visualisations at a time (late 90’s) that was considered cutting edge.

G4S Cash Solutions UK Ltd I was design lead on 86 commercial architecture projects for G4S Cash management sector which included projects for depot vehicle traffic management, building extensions for secure cash vehicle loading bays, & highly secure gold bullion & paper cash strong rooms. My largest project was design lead & BIM manager on a £7Mil 5,000 sq m new build cash management depot in Battersea in 2005

(A) Mathematics with Mechanics A-Level

(B) Physics A-Level

(A*) Mathematics GCSE

(A/ A) Science GCSE

(B) Art GCSE

(B) Geography GCSE

(D) English GCSE

(D) Spanish GCSE