Team stories

1. Tell us a bit about your professional background…

I’m a Chartered Structural Engineer with 13 years of experience in consultancy, specialising in the inspection, testing, assessment, and strengthening of complex bridges and heavy civil structures.

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked across the full lifecycle of infrastructure, from designing new post-tensioned concrete viaducts to assessing and rehabilitating historic suspension bridges, as well as managing ageing assets with safety-critical defects. A big part of my work has involved getting out on site, leading field investigations, and using techniques like non-destructive testing and structural health monitoring to understand how structures behave in the real world.

That mix of hands-on engineering experience, analytical problem-solving, and working with high-risk, real-world systems has shaped how I approach problems today and ultimately led me toward my current role at GScan.

2. Coming from a structured consultancy background, what has been the biggest surprise about the speed and flexibility of working in a startup?

One of the biggest surprises has been just how quickly decisions turn into action. In consultancy, there’s understandably a lot of structure, defined process, staged approvals, and a strong emphasis on managing risk before moving forward. In a startup, ideas can be discussed and tested almost immediately, often within days rather than weeks or months. Rather than fully de-risking everything upfront, you move faster, test earlier, and refine as you go.

Alongside that speed, the level of autonomy has been a big shift. I’ve found I have much more freedom to decide what’s best for the business and act on it, rather than working strictly within predefined scopes or following decisions set elsewhere. That comes with a different kind of responsibility; you’re expected to use your judgement and take ownership of outcomes, not just deliver against a brief.

3. How does it feel to be among the first engineers in the world using cosmic rays to help save aging infrastructure?

It’s genuinely very exciting. Using cosmic rays to assess infrastructure is something that would have sounded very theoretical not long ago, so being part of applying it to real, ageing assets is a unique position to be in.

There’s also a sense of responsibility that comes with working at an early stage of a new technology. You’re not just applying established methods; you’re helping shape how the technology is used in practice and how confidence is built in the results. That requires a combination of curiosity and openness to new approaches, alongside a healthy level of engineering scepticism.

4. What has been the most rewarding part of your first few months with the team?

The most rewarding part has been working so closely with top experts from such a broad range of fields and specialisms. I’m collaborating with physicists, machine learning experts, data scientists, software engineers, and manufacturing specialists, which is a very different environment to a traditional engineering consultancy.

That exposure has really broadened my perspective, not just in terms of new technologies, but in how different disciplines approach problems and make decisions. It’s pushed me to think differently and adapt my way of working, which has made it a particularly rewarding experience.

5. What are you most looking forward to achieving here in the coming year?

What I’m most looking forward to is helping take the technology from early application into something that is robust, repeatable, and genuinely impactful in real-world infrastructure decision-making.

From an engineering perspective, that means building confidence in how these new methods are applied to complex, safety-critical assets, and helping bridge the gap between advanced technology and practical structural assessment that engineers and asset owners can rely on.

Team stories

Interviews with the GScan team

Rufus Foster - Technical Director, Bridges (UK)