Ian Besford

I help people design buildings and infrastructure that create a better future for us all. Global Lead for Digital Delivery at Mott MacDonald. FIStructE. He/him.

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@MattSummerhill Jonathan Edward’s triple jump record from 1995 is my Bob Beamon I think!

[ClassicMovieClips @clips_classic]

Remembering Joe Takagi and Harry Ellis, who both went to work at the Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve 1988, and never came home🎄

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@pambhandal @buildingawards @rhyslewis_bim @BIM_Brown_ I’m looking forward to joining you all!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@a_shilliday @LEGO_Group Nice. Good spot on Costco - I’ve been waiting to see it discounted. 3 months is a long time to resist!

[Women in BIM @WomeninBIM]

We welcome you to join us for our first #WIB event this year in #Adelaide, Australia on Thursday 19 September. Join #WIB for exciting industry presentations from Founder & Chair of Women in BIM, @becdecicco and Natalia Wheeler from @MottMacDonald. https://t.co/tYRzZcl4dE

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Reminiscent of Sergey Bubka in his prime!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@leeroyb Your chances would increase if you had a bigger monitor…

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@StewartGH1970 @IStructE Good to see you!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Thoroughly enjoyed being part of the panel at today’s @Gensler_Europe #DesignForecastLive in Birmingham, talking about the exciting potential and challenges AI brings.

[Gensler Europe @Gensler_Europe]

We're excited to have held our third #DesignForecastLive event in Birmingham today, where we explored the most cutting-edge design trends to watch for this year!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Wonder what will be the limiting factor first - quality training data or data centre capacity and energy consumption - and when we will hit it. One thing is sure, exponential growth for anything is unsustainable.

[Mark Cummins @mark_cummins]

It’s no secret that LLM training data is running out. How close are we to the limit? To answer that, here's an estimate of the total amount of text in the world from every major source:

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

A Miami Grand Prix with some action, and a super result won on track. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke. Congratulations Lando!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Snooker time! #final #sheffieldissuper

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

#SennaSempre 🇧🇷 #30

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

I love this.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Neil Gaiman shares a brilliant story on imposter syndrome:

“Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name.

And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.”

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Today started with an 8am call, then covered off an innovation presentation, an information management workshop, hosting a guided tour of a project followed by a technical talk for the IStructE branch, and last the train to London. 😮‍💨 Ready for bed when I get there!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Productive few days off for Easter. Some tricky sticker work (and after market tyre vinyls) but it’s all in the details!

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@a_shilliday @applecore77 Good basis to modify it to be faster! Keeps me busy until the Senna McLaren is back in stock….

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

Oops. @applecore77 How did that happen…

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

@applecore77 Costco £25 off. Couldn’t resist. Had to do something during the Bahrain bore-fest.

[Ian Besford @ibes77]

This is great. One of my highlights from working on Heathrow T5 was being able to watch Concorde take off whilst I waited for the bus!!

[BBC Archive @BBCArchive]

#OnThisDay 1969: Concorde took to the skies. The Anglo-French plane took off from Toulouse on a test flight piloted by André Turcat.