Gallimaufry: News and Events from the British Dam Society

Tracey Williamson, Chair

I am thrilled and honoured to have been elected by the BDS Committee to be your next Chair for the 2-year term from 2017 to 2019. It is a great challenge, for which I shall devote all my energy and enthusiasm.

I would like to start by recognising the contribution of Andy Hughes, the outgoing BDS Chair, and to thank the Committee Members for making such a significant commitment to the BDS and the profession over the last 2 years.

I look forward to working with our new Vice-Chair, Alan Warren, and the Committee over the next 2 years. We will work towards achieving the five objectives in our recently published strategy, with the aim to deliver our vision to be ‘a growing, inclusive and vibrant society; sharing knowledge and improving reservoir safety’ (BDS, 2017).

Five ‘Strategic Objective Working Groups’ have been set up to work on these objectives, surrounding the topics of membership, knowledge, professionalism, education and informing opinion. We will aim to provide updates to you in our monthly eNewsletters, so if you haven't already signed up for these, please ensure you tick the box on the BDS website to receive these.

In the meantime, do not hesitate to contact any one of the Committee Members, if you wish to get involved in any of the BDS initiatives; you (and your ideas) would be very welcome.

Dr A K Hughes

I thought it would be useful to inform the readership/membership on the increasing number of initiatives that BDS is following to help, support, develop and encourage the young in our profession.

The initiatives we have already started are designed to be developed and expanded and we therefore hope to encourage and support more of our young people – of all ages from primary school to young engineers (less than 35 years) as time goes on.

We continue to support and develop teaching aids for schools and in particular teachers of geography and engineering in secondary schools. These teaching aids have been used extensively and although it is difficult to measure tangible benefits the uptake of the materials has been significant. The main committee of BDS has agreed that we will continue to support this initiative and update the material and make it as accessible as possible to teachers. We are also offering lecturers from our membership to go into schools to explain the benefits of and talk about the concerns associated with dams.

This year we have four Arkwright students. Arkwright students are students who apply for a scholarship via their schools. We have sponsored four students/schools this year. The Arkwright Scholarship Trust is a UK-wide charity that motivates high-potential A-level students who have a strong desire to be future leaders in engineering and technical design. It does this by awarding prestigious scholarships to sixth form students via a rigorous selection process. The Trust awards about 400 scholarships a year.

The candidates must pass a selection process including an application form, a 2 hour aptitude exam, and an interview. The scholarship consists of support from the sponsor, CAD software training, experience days, university taster courses, mentoring, free trade magazines, £600 to purchase books, project materials and enrichment experiences, while £400 goes to the school to spend on equipment and materials of teacher training – thereby benefitting successive year groups. In 2015 some 397 scholarships were awarded.

These first sponsorships have attracted 50% matched funding from Arkwright for BDS. BDS will provide during the 2 year sponsorship period an engineering mentor and possibly arrange work experience and site visits. We have also sponsored a student over the summer holidays to research a project of our choice – this year on sedimentation – as a way in which to inform one of the projects likely to start in the near future controlled by the Reservoirs Safety Advisory Group (RSAG).

If you have any questions, concerns or ideas for future initiatives please do not hesitate to contact me. We continue to provide lectures to a number of universities on demand.

Alan Brown

Review and, where appropriate, refinement of risk-based tools continues to develop. Some of you may have noticed articles in the national press quoting an article in Nuclear Futures that suggests that the value to prevent a fatality should be increased from around £1.7M (RARS section 10.3) to between £16 and £22M (Thomas and Waddington, 2017). This would have major implications for risk-based upgrades to dams, if substantiated, as the proportionate cost would increase by a factor of around ten. However, review of the proposed approach suggests that the evidence for this is not compelling with no evidence of practical application or calibration. A review by Deloitte LLP for NATO (Deloitte LLP, 2009) concluded that current UK values (as given in RARS) are consistent with European practice and this approach is therefore still considered reasonable.

Dr A K Hughes

‘Thank you for all your hard work on this. It was a very enjoyable and useful couple of days’. Naomi Ashcroft, PBA

‘Thanks for the huge amount of effort you put into the conference. I thoroughly enjoyed it’. John Cowie

‘It was good catching up with you at the conference last week – I really enjoyed the quality/interest of most papers and the craic was good too!’ Duncan Scott, SSE

‘I would to pass on my belated sincere thanks for yet another great conference, I know you and Barbara do a lot behind the scenes to get these things to happen and for that I'm grateful.’ Kevin Miller, Northumbrian Water

‘Thanks for helping make last week go so well. I think I enjoyed more than any of the previous’. Andrew Hobson, Yorkshire Water

‘Many thanks to you both for another excellent BDS conference’. Geoff Campbell

‘Thank you to you all and to the wider team for your amazing hard work this week and over the last two years in organising the BDS Conference. You should be very proud of what you have achieved. It was a huge success and another excellent conference’. Tracey Williamson, Arup

‘Just wanted to thank you for another excellent BDS conference and looking forward to the next one. The trip around Rivington was particularly interesting given its history’. Matt Coombs, Arcadis

‘Regarding the conference I thought it was one of the best investments Motts has made on my behalf and thoroughly enjoyed it; Peter Mason's speech/address was inspiring stuff for people like myself who are still relatively new to the world of dams and reservoirs. Thanks for your efforts (and those of Pam/Andrew/UU).’ Paul Bennett, MMB

‘On behalf of Mott MacDonald, many thanks for another great conference (and Friday night quiz) at Lancaster. Please pass our thanks on to all your team for all their obvious hard work and efforts over the last few days (and no doubt many months beforehand).’ Richard Robson, Mott MacDonald

‘I enjoyed the conference, interesting stuff as always’. Stephen Naylor, Environment Agency

‘This is just a note of thanks to you and the committee for making me an honorary member of BDS. It was very kind of you and I was very flattered by all the kind remarks you made about me. I particularly appreciated the photograph of Platanovryssi Dam and am grateful for the trouble that it must have taken to organise’. Jonathan Hinks, HR Wallingford

A full calendar of future events and meetings is provided on the BDS website, which is kept updated with any changes to the publicised events calendar. The website also includes a web link to those events held at the ICE London and a facility to ‘listen again’ to some of the previous presentations.