Heritage Engineering; Asset Management; Water and Sanitation; Multiphase Flow

Civil Engineering defines society: the human race cannot function without clean water, sustainable ways of dealing with waste, transport links, and structures to shelter ourselves and our businesses. Yet the work civil engineers do is generally taken for granted, noticed by the wider public only when something goes wrong.

Throughout my career as a consultant engineer in industry, then an academic, I have sought to deploy Civil Engineering thinking to make the world a better place, working in sediment transport (which affects environmental quality and navigation), transport of particles in fluids more generally (a huge number of industrial processes), water and sanitation in international development, and sustainable management of Civil Engineering assets.

More recently, I have sought to understand our Civil Engineering heritage, using modern thought and techniques to interpret the achievements of the past, and communicate their continuing value, both practically and inspirationally, over succeeding generations. I was a leader of the interdisciplinary project Engineering the Byzantine Water Supply, examining the construction and operation of the aqueducts supplying the Roman city of Constantinople, which was the longest water supply system in the ancient world; I am collaborating with engineering modelling of the water supply and drainage of Pompeii, as well as investigating the hydraulic performance of Roman water pipes excavated from Corbridge.

When not working I fire steam engines on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and I am a fan of Yorkshire and England cricket.

I was member of the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) from December 2018 to October 2021.

I served on the Fellowship Panel of the ICE from 2011 to 2019.

I serve on the Academic Panel of the Permanent Way Institution (PWI).

I am a Reviewer, carrying out Chartered Professional Reviews, for both the ICE and the PWI.