Our History

Our Beginning

In 1998, with 45 years' experience behind him, Alan White began designing suspended access systems as an independent engineering consultant. He founded Alan White Design in 2000, designing several popular systems including Technitruss, System 25, the X-Beam, and Oblik all of which are still widely used within the access engineering industry.

With a rapidly growing reputation, Alan was joined by Malachy Ryan in 2009, and the company diversified into the design of temporary works, structural design, aluminium design, bamboo design, and the design of tensile membrane structures.

Our company has continued to grow, recruiting a further 6 structural engineers, with our team gaining invaluable experience across hundreds of different engineering projects, becoming temporary works design engineers of choice for many contractors across Scotland and the rest of the UK.

In March 2015, Alan entered semi-retirement, and Malachy became our Managing Director, overseeing further development of the company across the UK and Ireland, as well as introducing our work to overseas markets.

Our Present

Our current reputation has been built on engineering excellence, providing inspired design solutions, tailored to our client's needs, whatever they may be. We take pride in our progressive approach, producing cost-effective and easy to build designs.

We prefer to work in partnership with our clients to provide the best-fit solution for each project. Our dynamic team bring fresh-thinking to the table to solve even the most complex of engineering challenges and consistently push the boundaries of our profession.   

We have gained national and international recognition for providing the very best in engineering design, collecting several prestigious prizes throughout our journey, while working on some of the most iconic projects in the UK, taking our place amongst the biggest and best names in the engineering industry.

Our Future

Our vision for the future is bold – we want to produce the very best in engineering design while pushing the boundaries of our profession. We are investing in new technologies and digital techniques such as our 3D printed models which bring our ideas to life for our clients in the model environment, saving time and money on site.

We are also committed to taking a greener approach to engineering, recycling and upcycling materials and resources wherever possible to reduce our impact on the environment and help our clients to do the same.

As AWD enters its 18th year, we continue to grow and diversify, and in 2018 we have rebranded our company to reflect the forward-thinking and innovative company we have become. Our new image supports our vision for the future, to maintain our position as industry leaders in temporary works, access engineering and structural design, driven by our dynamic, creative team.