Structural Engineering

We’ve been passionate about structural engineering since Murray Northrop founded the business – that’s 50 years of partnering with clients, architects, builders and PMs to deliver buildings around the country.

As Northrop has grown from Canberra across the eastern seaboard, our expertise has grown too. From stadium and long-span experts in Brisbane, modular schools specialists in Newcastle, and architectural detailing masters in Melbourne, our national team leverages our shared knowledge to bring best-practise solutions to your project.

Why is over 80% of our work repeat business? We know that the magic happens on site, where our designs get tested by the reality of construction, and the commercial drivers of our clients. We take a pragmatic and curious approach, seeking to understand the impact that repetition, off-site manufacture and materials handling make to program and cost, and considering these factors in our designs.

Long-term partnerships are important to us, and we’ll work to support you across your whole portfolio – whether it’s a high bay warehouse or a signpost footing – because we know we’re able to add more value when we can really put ourselves in your shoes.

We reckon we’ve also got the best grad and trainee development program around, ensuring our people cut their teeth on site and understand the bigger picture of projects, including our client’s key risks and opportunities, as well as coordination with the rest of the design team.

We have over 20 registered Design Practitioners across our Wollongong, Sydney, Parramatta, Central Coast and Newcastle offices able to help guide you through this complex process, mitigating delays. We’ve successfully delivered many projects up to $150m, been through audits, and understand the key pressure points from the Building Commissioner.

Our national industrial and logistics team loves the challenge of optimising steel designs for warehouses – from high bays, multi-storey and everyday sheds, this sector makes up about 20% of our workload. We’ve developed custom software for optimising wind loads as well as finding the most efficient steel sections for offshore, welded production – which can save you up to 15% in tonnage.

We love working with architects to deliver award-winning projects that exemplify good design. The challenge of achieving invisible connections, floating cantilevers or quality concrete finishes is motivating for our team, who enjoy seeing a building come together and adding value to local communities.

These are our team’s favourite projects – so it’s a good thing we have a team of experts in long-span and stadium structures, based in Brisbane and gearing up for the 2032 Olympics.

We’ve delivered several landmark timber structures including roof structures for the new Sydney Fish Market and AMRF and several schools and sports buildings. Our timber team have spent time in Europe, learning from local manufacturers and connection designers, and understand the importance of BIM accuracy and advanced coordination.

50 years in business means we know what good looks like, especially when it comes to structural systems we’ve designed over and over again. We’re able to quickly draw from this experience to support a feasibility study, develop cost-effective tender designs and bring construction knowledge to the table during design development.

• Concept Design
• Detailed Design For Construction
• Post-tensioned design, documentation and certification
• Piling design, documentation and certification
• Long-Span Structural Design
• Shop Drawing Production – LOD 400
• Sydney Water Specialist Engineering Reports
• Transport for NSW Impact Reports
• Construction Phase Services
• Expert Witness Services
• Peer Review
• Parametric Modelling
• Embodied Carbon Measurement

• Concept Design
• Detailed Design For Construction

• Commercial and Fitout
• Data Centres
• Education
• Government and Defence
• Health
• Hotels and Hospitality
• Industrial
• Infrastructure/Bridges
• Residential and Student Accommodation
• Seniors Living
• Sports
• Public Domain and Community
• Upgrade / Audit / Electrification

For example, we regularly interface on:
• In-ground infrastructure – our civil team often lead site servicing infrastructure modelling, coordinating with in-ground structure to mitigate clashes
• Building services – understanding mechanical reticulation requirements helps us design beam layouts and slab penetrations

• Sustainability – we do carbon take-offs from our REVIT models, working with our sustainability team to better understand the impact of our structural designs on the overall building footprint
• Heritage and remedial – we love working on existing buildings, and collaborate with our specialist teams to understand structural upgrade requirements and appropriate certification approaches