Initially supposed to follow his father into the family business, Pippard instead decided to study for a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at the University of Bristol, supporting himself with an Exhibition award.

Pippard worked for a Bristol based consulting engineer and for the Pontypridd and Rhondda Valley Joint Water Board in his early career.

The public enquiry into the latter's crash, which ended British participation in airship development, found no faults with Pippard's work but he withdrew from the field of aeronautical engineering – feeling keenly the loss of several of his friends amongst the 48 dead.

During the Second World War Pippard was a member of the Civil Defence Research Committee which met at Princes Risborough and continued his teaching at Imperial College.

With three siblings still at school it was only Pippard's winning of the Proctor Baker Exhibition with the accompanying payment of his tuition fees that allowed him to continue his studies.

One of his first jobs was to design the steelwork for a warehouse in Bristol on which he gave a talk to the local students association of the ICE in 1913 for which he was awarded the Miller Prize and a set of drawing instruments which he used for the rest of his life.

[1] He completed his apprenticeship in 1913 and obtained a position as assistant engineer to the Pontypridd and Rhondda Valley Joint Water Board, he did not enjoy this routine work and disliked his district.

[1][3] To continue his interest in civil engineering he began a Master of Science dissertation on masonry dams which he wrote at evenings and weekends.

Pippard's name was brought to the attention of HC Watts, who was a university classmate and a member of the technical section of the Admiralty Air Department.

Later that year Pippard and JL Pritchard, another colleague, wrote Aeroplane Structures which became a standard reference for aeronautical engineers and was revised in 1935.

[1] He moved to Imperial College in London in 1933 and took over the running of the civil engineering department there where he actively encouraged a more research centric teaching method.

[1] This attitude was demonstrated in a paper presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1935 in which he states that "University years should be devoted to the study of engineering science with as little emphasis as possible on the practical interests of the work".

Pippard was also influential in the career of Letitia Chitty, recruiting the then promising mathematician to work at the Admiralty Air Department during World War I, an experience that prompted her to switch to engineering.

In April 1939, predicting the approaching war, Pippard joined the Civil Defence Research Committee at the invitation of Sir John Anderson, Lord Privy Seal and minister in charge of air raid precautions.

Fortunately the government's decision to allow university students to complete their degrees before compulsory national service meant that Pippard could spend four days of his week lecturing at Imperial College whilst remaining a member of the committee, a practice he continued for the rest of the war.

[1] Pippard was elected to the council of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1944 in which he continued to sit for the next fifteen years, advocating an increased academic presence in that body.