News: Honorary life membership for Michael Kennard, Andrew Charles, Iain Moffat and Paul Tedd

Michael Kennard has been involved in the design and construction of dams since the early 1950s when he worked for the contractor on the construction of Sutton Bingham reservoir. He became a partner of Sandeman, Kennard & Partners in 1955 where he worked with his father Julius, also an eminent dam engineer. In his 40 years with Sandeman, Kennard & Partners and then Rofe, Kennard & Lapworth he was responsible for the construction of numerous UK embankment dams including Selset, Balderhead, Bewl Bridge and Ardingly as well as concrete gravity dams at Meldon and Upper Tamar and a combined earth and concrete dam at Cow Green. He was retained by the contractor on the construction of the original Carsington dam and advised that the cross-section as designed was inadequate some 6 months before its failure.

The 52 m high dam at Balderhead was, at the time of its completion in 1964, the highest earth dam in the UK. During first filling increased seepage and the appearance of swallow holes were observed. Subsequent investigations revealed this to have been caused by internal erosion. The problem was resolved by grouting and the installation of a plastic concrete membrane in a slurry trench. This was successful and the work was written up extensively, including a paper by Michael Kennard, Arthur Penman and Peter Vaughan for the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) congress in 1967 entitled ‘Stress and strain measurements in the clay core at Balderhead dam’.

He was one of the first engineers to encounter significant opposition to the construction of reservoirs on environmental grounds. Cow Green reservoir was constructed in Upper Teesdale, an area of rich flora and fauna a short distance upstream of Cauldron Snout waterfall. Only after an extensive series of select committee hearings and debates was the scheme approved by parliament. The construction of a reservoir at Meldon in the Dartmoor National Park also generated many objections which were addressed by sensitive landscaping of the 55 m high concrete dam.

He also worked extensively overseas, including the design and construction of two rockfill dams over 50 m high at Kalavasos and Dhypotamos in Cyprus and advising on reservoirs in places such as Pakistan, Hong Kong, Botswana and Libya. He wrote over 30 technical papers, many of which were related to geotechnical matters associated with embankment dams. His paper on Cow Green dam and reservoir (co-written with Dick Reader) won the Institution of Civil Engineers' (ICE) Telford Premium award. He directed the studies leading to the publication of several Ciria reports on reservoir engineering which are widely used, including those on concrete dams, valves and pipework, reinforced grass and small embankment reservoirs.

He was involved in the activities of the British Dam Society (BDS) from the formation of its predecessor, the British National Committee on Large Dams (BNCOLD), in 1967. He was the first – and longest ever serving – editor of Dams and Reservoirs from 1967 to 1974; chairman of BDS from 1977 to 1980; and was the UK representative on a number of ICOLD technical committees. He presented the Geoffrey Binnie Lecture in 1994, entitled ‘Four decades of development of British embankment dams’. He was also involved in the organisation of several of the early biennial conferences and has been a member of numerous committees and working parties including the ICE working party that led to the publication of the first edition of Floods and Reservoir Safety in 1978.

Dr Andrew Charles studied soil mechanics at Imperial College under Professors Skempton, Bishop and Gibson. He then worked for Balfour Beatty, which included work on the construction of Backwater dam in Scotland. In 1967, he joined the geotechnics division of the Building Research Station, now BRE, working for Dr Arthur Penman in the dams section. He was involved with the instrumentation of Scammonden, Llyn Brianne, Winscar and Megget dams to monitor their behaviour during construction and in the long term.

Extensive studies of the behaviour of both new embankment dams and old puddle clay core dams have resulted in the publication of more than 70 journal and conference papers, and three BRE guides relating to reservoir safety: An Engineering Guide to the Safety of Embankment Dams in the United Kingdom in 1999, An Engineering Guide to the Seismic Risk to Dams in the United Kingdom in 1991 and Investigating Embankment Dams – A Guide to the Identification and Repair of Defects in 1996. He made a major contribution to the Coxon report following the failure of Carsington dam in 1984.

He was awarded a DSc(Eng) degree from the University of London in 1986. For over 20 years he was chairman of the BSI committee for BS 1377 ‘Methods of test for soils for civil engineering purposes’.

Andrew became the first honorary technical secretary of the BDS in 1986 and continued the role until 1994. He has been a member of ICE's reservoirs committee since 1996 and still remains on it – the longest serving member. He was convener of the European working group on internal erosion in embankment dams from 1993 to 2002.

In 1997, he was invited by ICOLD to be the general reporter for question 73 ‘Special problems associated with earthfill dams’. He gave the Geoffrey Binnie Lecture in 1998 ‘Lives of embankment dams: construction to old age’. In 1999, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the Bateman Prize of the BDS in 2002.

Since retirement in 2002, he has continued as a consultant to BRE. He completed a book Geotechnics for Building Professionals. In 2008, he gave the British Geotechnical Association's 48th Rankine Lecture, an abbreviated version of which was published in Dams and Reservoirs. He has been a member of a number of advisory and review panels for the construction of new dams and the modification of existing dams. He was a member of a review panel which assessed the extensive research programme which was undertaken following the internal erosion problems at the 183 m high WAC Bennett dam in British Columbia and a member of an international review panel for the safety evaluation of the 125 m high Trängslet rockfill dam in Sweden.

Most recently he co-authored the Environment Agency science report Lessons from Historical Dam Incidents, an area of work he has been involved in for much of his career.

Iain Moffat commenced his professional training on the Cruachan pumped-storage hydro-electric project in Scotland. He subsequently joined a prominent firm of consulting engineers in Newcastle, gaining design experience on ash lagoon embankments and other works associated with large thermal power stations.

Joining the department of civil engineering (now the school of civil engineering and geosciences) at the University of Newcastle, Iain taught and researched in dam engineering and geotechnics, developing unique postgraduate programmes in the former. He has lectured widely, teaching specialist courses in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Malaysia as well as in the UK, where he has taught on the ES01 and ES15 supervising engineer short courses since their inception. He also co-authored a successful textbook, Hydraulic Structures, now in its 4th edition.

Having joined the then BNCOLD at its inception, Iain served several terms on the committee of the BDS. In 1975, he initiated the first of the Society's very successful series of biennial conferences at Newcastle. He also served on ICE's panel for historical engineering works, delivering the Smeaton Lecture for 2010 on ‘John Frederic Bateman FRS, Victorian dam engineer’.

Ian was appointed HM Vice-Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland in 2002, standing down in 2013. He lives near Hexham with his wife Madeline and has two adult children. His extra-professional interests include nineteenth century history, music, walking and travel, with naval history and the development of the submarine at the forefront.

Dr Paul Tedd has spent most of his career working in the geotechnics division of BRE, undertaking research and investigation of geotechnical engineering structures including tunnels, retaining structures, radioactive waste repositories and containment systems for contaminated land. He gained a PhD in 1986 on the performance of tunnel linings in the Kielder tunnels.

Reservoir safety studies have formed a major part of his work since 1985 and have involved research and field monitoring of many old puddle clay core dams with the emphasis on internal erosion and deformations associated with reservoir drawdown. He is a joint author of four national guides and more than 30 papers relating to dam safety.

From 1994 to 2003, he was honorary technical secretary of the BDS and editor of four of the society's conference proceedings. He was the manager of the BRE national dams database since its inception in 1987 and developed it for risk analysis. Also, he was involved in the development of the Environment Agency post-incident reporting dam database and has continued to maintain the ‘Bibliography of British dams’ that is on the BDS website. In 2003, he was awarded a DSc(Eng) degree from the University of London and in 2013 received the BDS's Bateman award for work on a paper that investigated internal erosion.

Each of the recipients received a framed photograph of dams on which they worked.