[8] During World War Two, in the summer of 1940, Fordham went with his mother to stay with his uncle, Christopher Swabey, in Jamaica, to avoid the bombing of London.
[9] Upon returning to England, Fordham attended the progressive Dartington Hall School,[10] which intended to change social attitudes[11] in the world.
[citation needed] This gave him a deeper education in chemistry and physics than he would have done if he had studied engineering.
[citation needed] He enjoyed the company of people studying the humanities and had shared rooms with Simon Hepworth-Nicholson, a school friend and artist.
[citation needed] Sir Leslie Martin arranged a job for Fordham as a development engineer at Weatherfoil Heating Systems[13] Ltd in 1958, where he worked until 1961.
He designed the metered fan convection heating for Harvey Court, Cambridge, and was named as the inventor when this was patented.
[14] While Weatherfoil gave him a generous introduction to the building industry, they wanted to promote him away from design and into representing the firm.
[citation needed] After meeting Sir Philip Dowson through his future wife, Thalia Dyson, in 1961 he joined the Building Group (now Arup Associates),[15] a group that included architects and structural engineers from Ove Arup & Partners.
[17] He was on the judging panel for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2005 and in 2006 was voted into the inaugural Building Hall of Fame, a list of 40 people who have had the most significant positive impact on the UK construction industry in the last 40 years.