Peter Thomas Dunican

Peter Thomas Dunican CBE FICE FISTructE FiEI was a structural engineer and former chairman of Ove Arup & Partners.

Life and career

Involved in Arup from its early days, and becoming a partner in 1956, Peter Dunican is widely regarded as the right-hand man of Ove Arup, the firm's founder. In the words of Jack Zunz and Peter Hobbs, other senior parters 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, Dunican is credited with overseeing much of its growth from a single office in London in 1946 to a firm of over 7000 staff now. He also worked on many of the firms most iconic projects, including the Sydney Opera House, Coventry Cathedral, Centre Pompidou, the Barbican Estate and others.

He was president of the Institution of Structural Engineers in 1977 and 1978.

He died in 1989.

Awards

Peter Dunican was awarded a CBE in 1977.