Former Bristol Chamber of Commerce president Bob Durie and Hewlett Packard Laboratories director Martin Sadler have been awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.
Mr Durie, pictured, a former High Sheriff of Bristo land a stalwart of the city’s business and charitable communities, receives his honour for his services to the community in the city.
Mr Sadler, director of HP’s pioneering cloud and security lab at its North Bristol base, receives his for services to science.
Mr Durie, 71, is currently vice patron of the National Association of Almshouses and chairman of The Patron Awards panel for rewarding nationwide excellence in almshouse refurbishment and development.
But he is probably best known for his many years as a leading chartered surveyor in the region, helping to bring many of the Bristol’s biggest developments to fruition – including the Redcliffe Quay office scheme close to the city centre, and the Imperial Park retail scheme in South Bristol.
He started work, rather more humbly, in 1959 as a trainee surveyor for the princely sum of 5s 2d (26p) a week when his employers Stanley Alder & Price were selling houses in East Bristol for as little as £50.
He later joined JP Sturge and Sons, becoming a partner and helping establish the practice, by then King Sturge (and now JLL), as one of the leading firms of chartered surveyors in the South West. He later moved to rivals Alder King.
A Bristolian by birth, he has also played a key role in the city’s economic development. In 1982, as chairman of Bristol Marketing Board, he led a delegation to California to ‘sell Bristol’ to the silicon chip industry – now a very important business sector for the local economy. In 1987 he was elected president of Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
His contribution to many local charities has also been recognised. Early in his working life he joined both Lady Haberfield Almshouse Charity and The Anchor Society to follow his passion to do something for elderly, isolated and less fortunate local people. After a decade as hon. secretary of The Anchor Society in 1996, he became its president to personally raise funds for the cause. In this he followed a family tradition. Ten of Robert’s relatives have served in the post – his great-great grandfather and great grandfather were presidents in 1896 and 1906 respectively. He remains very active in the Society.
He has also played a role in BYCA – Bristol Youth Community Action. The charity, started by the city’s recently-elected mayor George Ferguson when he was High Sheriff, provides opportunities for young people from challenged communities to learn, develop and have fun during their school holidays.
Mr Durie said: “It is a wonderful unexpected surprise to be recognised for the work I have done for the community of Bristol, about which I have cared passionately for close to 50 years.
“At the start of what is now a long and continuing business career as a proud Bristolian I wanted to invest some of my energies back into the community in which we live which also follows a family tradition of caring for our community.”
Mr Sadler is one of the UK’s leading experts on information and cyber security. He sits on the board of The Institute of Information Security Professionals, the steering committee for the UK’s Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network, the British Computer Society’s Security Forum Strategic Panel, the advisory group for the Information Systems Security Association’s UK chapter, and the CBI’s Information Security working group.
In 2004 and 2005 he served as a co-chair for Techcon – HP’s internal technical conference celebrating the best in innovation across the company and was a member of the advisory board for the UK’s Foresight project on cyber trust and crime prevention, outlining the strategic need for investment in cyber security.
He has a degree in pure mathematics and lectured in theoretical computing science and advanced software engineering at Imperial College, London, before joining HP Labs in 1989 to lead the research project that resulted in the company’s first workflow product. He subsequently managed projects in the area of telephony call control before leading early work on e-business and security.
