Mohsen chooses to spend more than half his working life directly on projects. He says succinctly,

“At Whitby Wood, engineering comes first. That matters to me. And I’m excited by the team’s ambition.”

Mohsen champions sustainable engineering, combining creative designs for substructure and superstructure, wherever possible incorporating material reuse and modular construction. He’s worked on ground engineering projects all over the world, amassing an enviable portfolio encompassing landmark buildings, super high rise developments, complex urban regeneration, large-scale rail infrastructure and offshore wind farms.

He believes appreciating nature is the first step in understanding geotechnics, “because the earth is not manmade” and all buildings “rely on their foundations — their weakest point, which hardly anybody sees. It’s in the soil; the soil is part of nature, and that makes every project unique.”

Mohsen’s reputation for unflappability is rooted in his calm demeanour and unwavering focus on cracking problems as they arise. He admits, “when I’m working on something challenging, I can’t move away from it. It might be 4:00am and I’ll wake up and think, ‘We should do it like this.’ There is always a solution. … If you enjoy what you do, you’re never going to stop.”

His enthusiasm for complex geotechnical engineering is matched by his passion for team building, mentoring and supporting younger engineers to grow their careers. “The people below me in a firm have always been more important to me than the people above,” he says.

Mohsen’s London projects include
— Royal Mint Gardens Aparthotel, 12-storey hotel and residential building over rail tunnels
— Candle Factory, new build and refurbishment on complex former industrial site
— M0121 Greenwich, high rise residential development on brownfield site
— 5 Kingdom Street Paddington Central
— BBC W1 New Broadcasting House, 14m deep basement
— Tate Modern II extension
— Waterloo International Terminal, raft foundation

In Wales, Gwynt Y Mor Stage 2 wind farm with 160 offshore turbines. Mohsen also assists as an expert in legal cases giving expert opinion in relation to geotechnical failures and disputes, as well as producing due diligence reports.

Key international projects include
— Bestseller Tower feasibility for 320m tall residential building, Denmark
— Lighthouse 2.0, 146m tall tower, Denmark
— Extremely Large Telescope>, Chile
— Heart of Doha Phase 4, 14 multi-storey structures on a common five-level basement, Qatar
— MiSK Art Institute, Saudi Arabia
— The Line Module 43 Piling, Saudi Arabia
— Oktha Centre Tower, Russia
— Pulkovo Airport Terminal, Russia
— Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi