Welcome to the November 2022 edition of Civil Engineering. The work of civil engineers has always been challenging: creating solutions within complex constraints, and then building them into three-dimensional physical existence. The profession also has to consider the dimension of time, understanding the past, present and future of every project.
The ability to make engineering decisions for a rapidly changing future – impacted both by changing climate and changing societal needs – is an ever-more-important requirement. People think of civil engineers as working on projects in the here and now, but all the papers in this issue highlight connections across time. They also show the growing requirement of the profession to augment its technical knowledge with data in various forms.
The first paper, by Snow and Tennant (2022), provides a stark reminder that civil engineers will increasingly need to respond to the severe impacts of more extreme climates. The paper is about the installation of a new bridge in Cumbria, UK. Its 250-year-old predecessor was swept away overnight, storm waters having eroded the riverbed around its supports. While a physical replacement was needed, the authors explain it was more than just stones that were washed away. They discuss not only the technical details around the UK’s first stainless-steel road bridge, but also how history, present community and sustainability were reflected in their decisions.
Parkes (2022) then talks about how data can be used to address some of the challenges facing the profession. He identifies other sectors that learn from data, and shows that despite having increasing amounts of information, civil engineers need to do more with it. He also highlights how rapidly changing societal needs have shown how the profession can rise to the challenge, using these examples to help learn about opportunities and better understand current challenges. He discusses some current initiatives and where civil engineers might go next. As data is one of the most valuable tools in connecting past, present and future to make better decisions, this paper provides us all with something to think about in our own work, no matter what sector.
We then head underground, where Kumpfmueller et al. (2022) discuss a new subterranean triple escalator at Bank station in London, where the inclined tunnel was unusually excavated uphill rather than downhill due to restricted access. It requires little imagination to understand that working underground in central London is no easy task, negotiating many layers of geological history and buried assets. The authors walk through design considerations, construction sequence, operational risk management and the response of existing assets to uphill tunnelling. They make extensive use of data, calibrating numerical models with information collected prior to the project to provide a holistic understanding of the behaviour of the new tunnel and the response of existing structures to uphill tunnelling.
The final paper is also about historic bridges – but in this case the structures are still very much standing, having grown and evolved over time. Threader (2022) describes the ‘once-in-a-generation’ refurbishment of the three river crossings that form Rochester Bridge in Kent, UK. In addition to historic and technical design challenges, she discusses procurement (it was one of the first civil engineering projects to use the NEC fourth edition), construction and safety decisions which led to high-quality, under-budget and on-time completion. It is clear from this case study how civil engineers are looking to the past, the present and the future in terms of capacity, but the author also considers these aspects through a sustainability lens. Several measures were put in place – from reuse of materials and energy considerations to greenhouse gas emissions and offset – to the point where emissions from future maintenance were reduced by 90%.
Each of the papers has some really interesting examples to learn from and they set the tone for civil engineers working in the context of rapid societal and climate changes. I hope you enjoy reading them.
