RWDI

Peter Irwin has consulted on many of the world's most dramatic new skyscrapers, but the structure he loves most is his cottage on Georgian Bay. He's a windsurfer, boater, and family man who gathers his children and their children regularly at the cottage every summer.

Airplanes were his first engineering passion. After two years of aerodynamics research at England's Royal Aircraft Establishment, Peter spent three years at McGill University where he earned a PhD, then switched his research to the effects of high winds on large structures like tall buildings and long-span bridges. A career was launched.

Creativity, says Peter, is endemic at RWDI. "People here feed off each other, and the great work they do, and great ideas are often the result. A well-known Cambridge professor used to say, 'Ninety percent of good ideas come out of work already in progress.'"