Western Australia

Mike Garton commenced eingineering in the UK with a traditional 5 year apprenticeship with a company who were known then as one of the leading power station design construct companies in the world – International Combustion.  As an apprentice draughtsman, 3 years were spent in the works with 2 years in the drawing office.  Life at “Combustion” provided work experience on a variety of power stations from traditional pulverised solid fuel fired systems, fluidised bed to the then new age of nuclear power.

Mike was introduced to the forerunner of building services engineering as a heating & ventilating engineer with Derbyshire County Council. This provided valuable experience through the design of mechanical services associated with a variety of local authority buildings, such as schools, colleges of FE & police stations etc.
Having “cut his teeth” he eventually moved to the East Anglian Regional Hospital Board, Cambridge, as a main grade engineer leading a team responsible for a significant part of the mechanical services design in a new 1000 bed district general hospital. This was a whole new experience for him and provided a fascinating insight into the design and scope of engineering services across a wide range of hospital specialisms. Whilst at Cambridge, Mike became a Chartered Engineer including membership of both IHVE (the forerunner of CIBSE) and IMechE.

The time eventually came to move on and the next move in his career saw him become the Chief Heating & Ventilating Engineer and subsequently Managing Engineer (Mechanical) leading a group of engineers responsible for the capital design and revenue maintenance works within the Architects Department of Nottinghamshire County Council (UK).  During this period, Mike became more closely involved with CIBSE, spending some 10 years on the East Midlands Region Committee - two years of which were as the Regional Chairman. Whilst at Nottinghamshire he represented the County Council on the national body of the Society of Chief M & E Engineers in Local Government.

Mike’s working career ended in Nottingham and after a period of retirement migrated to Australia in 2000, where once again he found himself intimately involved with CIBSE. 

In 2004 he became Chairman of the WA Chapter of CIBSE and the following year Secretary of the ANZ Region – both of these positions being held up to the present time.

In 2009 Mike was awarded the CIBSE Bronze Medal for Services to the Region.