Opening address

Offshore engineering has developed rapidly and is already an exciting business. There are some people who have been interested for many years, but the rate of expansion of the work has created an entirely new situation. North Sea offshore engineering has opened up for UK civil engineers a challenging new field of activity where their enthusiasm has been stimulated by the combination of operations in very unfavourable conditions with urgency.

It is satisfactory to the Institution of Civil Engineers that this conference is jointly sponsored by the Institution of Structural Engineers and the Society for Underwater Technology. Each of these organizations has specific interests and responsibilities which need to be brought together to ensure that the subject of offshore engineering is adequately examined. The structural engineers have obvious specific interest in the structures themselves; the civil engineers bring in a wide variety of disciplines concerned with related problems, such as hydraulics, sea bed foundation strengths, and many of the logistical problems. The Society for Underwater Technology has the great advantage of interdisciplinary interest which all major civil engineering efforts require to call upon, and none more than offshore engineering.