Peter Wilkinson

  • Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in Fire Safety Design

As a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in fire safety design at the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University, Dr Peter Wilkinson is helping to inject fire safety know-how into architecture and built-environment student curricula. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Scientist, and a Registered Fire Risk Assessor with close to 30 years post-graduate experience in fire engineering.

Portrait photograph of academic visitor to the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University, Peter Wilkinson

In 2012 he founded Pyrology Limited, an independent safety, fire and risk engineering practice. His work involves undertaking strategic fire safety engineering consultancy, fire risk assessments, and expert witness assignments. He was invited to help expand the well-established Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures (CROSS) confidential safety concerns reporting scheme, from being solely focused on structural safety including fire safety. Since the relaunch in April 2021, he now acts as one of two Designated People, anonymizing reports sent to CROSS before sharing with an expert panel and publishing. 

He undertakes several voluntary roles, including Chairing the BSI Technical Committee FSH/024 Fire Safety Engineering, maintaining and developing the codes outlining a fire engineering process, and Chairing FSH/009 Fire Terminology, leading a review of BS4422 Fire- Vocabulary. He also serves as an elected Trustee of the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE), the international organisation for fire professionals, and is the Institution’s International President 2022/23. He represents the Institution on technical and industrial committees and working groups. Additionally, he chairs an Engineering Council project to develop a contextualized registration pathway for professional engineers who will be working on ‘in-scope’ buildings as defined by the Building Safety Act which is designed to give confidence in the competence of professional engineers.

Dr Wilkinson’s academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering (Loughborough University, 1995), a Master of Science degree in Fire and Explosion (University of Leeds, 2003) and an Engineering Doctorate entitled An investigation into resilient fire engineering building design (Loughborough University, 2013).

His professional recognitions include;

  • Fellow, Chartered Engineer and registered fire risk assessor with the Institution of Fire Engineers;
  • Member and Chartered Scientist with the Institute of Science and Technology;
  • Associate Member of the Academy of Experts (Practicing Category as a Fire engineer);
  • Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers;
  • Engineering Associate member of the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers; and
  • Professional Member of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.