Welcome to our new Heritage Development Officer

Please welcome Mari McKee to the Hearth Team.  Mari will be taking on the role of Hearth’s new Heritage Development Officer, managing the Trust’s property portfolio and leading the Riddel’s Warehouse project.

Mari comes to us with 10+ years’ experience working in the heritage sector for organisations including Historic Environment Scotland, RCAHMS, and the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as the private sector. 

Mari studied a Bachelors in Architecture and has a Master of Science in Architectural Conservation from the University of Edinburgh.  Having a passion for history and the conservation repair of historical buildings, she has spent most of her career working in conservation building survey.   She has extensive experience in carrying out Measured Surveys, Condition Surveys and Reports, having produced Conservation Plans, Concept Reports, Heritage Construction Management Plans and Specifications for Conservation Repair.

Through her previous work as a Digital Documentation Officer at Historic Environment Scotland and as a Survey Manager at asBuilt Ltd in New Zealand, Mari has gained in-depth experience in producing High-Definition Surveys (HDS) using a range of laser scanners and drones.

During her time with Historic Environment Scotland, Mari also assisted with the research for the Forth Bridge UNESCO World Heritage Nomination which was successfully granted World Heritage status in 2015. 

Mari has experience working internationally having been part of the Scottish Ten Team, digitally documenting the UNESCO World Heritage industrial sites of the Meiji period in Japan and from when she immigrated to New Zealand for four years after taking a year to travel around the world.  Here she spent three years as a Conservation Building Surveyor working for a leading conservation practice Salmond Reed Architects.  

More recently, Mari worked as a Conservation Consultant in Dublin where she contributed to the Galway Town Heritage Design Guidance, leading the condition survey and repair specification of the Valentia Transatlantic Cable Station and provided conservation reports and consultation to a multidiscipline design team on the largescale regeneration of two historic psychiatric hospitals in Dublin.

Since returning to Northern Ireland in 2021 Mari has been re-establishing her roots in Belfast where her enthusiasm was first sparked as a teenager for the appreciation, protection and conservation of Northern Ireland’s historic architecture; in particular its often undervalued vernacular and industrial buildings.  She is excited to get stuck into the role and particularly in driving the Riddel’s Warehouse project forward; working with and for the community.

We are very grateful to the National Lottery Community Fund and Dormant Accounts Fund for making this role possible.