Category: Events

Professor Peter McCulloch of the University of Oxford on why patient safety is such a “wicked” problem, and what radical improvement would take.

The costs of heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires continue to mount as global temperatures rise, yet efforts to halt global heating remain stalled. Professor Stott discussed the mounting evidence linking human-induced greenhouse gas emissions to the rapid increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather, recounted his experiences with climate change denial, and proposed…

We share our planet with millions of species, each forming a cog in the vast and complex machine that is the biosphere. Human activity has been driving species to extinction to the point where Life may now be entering a sixth mass extinction. Human-driven climate change could, over the next few decades, push millions of…

The lecture followed the Section’s Annual General Meeting on Monday 27 January 2025, at which Roger Venables took over as President from Chris Foster. Tunnel collapses are usually catastrophic, with serious consequences. Professor Lord Mair explained the key role played by geotechnics, and how tunnel collapses are generally caused either by ground instability at the…

Members and friends joined the ICE Annual Carol Service at St Margaret’s Church, “the Church on Parliament Square”, on Thursday 28 November 2024. The service was followed by mulled wine and mince pies at the Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, and then an IESF pre-Christmas buffet supper at ICE, to which ICE…

Lucy Rew described the Lyon–Turin high speed rail project, and specifically the 57 km trans-border underground section between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in France and Susa in Italy, with a focus on the SMP4 contract. This was an 11 km geotechnical reconnaissance tunnel, built on the axis of the running tunnel and at its finished diameter, partly by…

On 22 August 1985 a British Airtours Boeing 737 suffered an uncontained engine failure on the runway at Manchester Airport, resulting in a catastrophic fire and the deaths of 55 people. The accident had a profound effect on aviation safety thanks to the painstaking investigation that followed. Using examples from a 30-year career in safety,…