Pieces of the Puzzle….

A stack of events this week:
- Brunel to Broadband evening lecture
- The ‘Halcrow Studio’ opened in Cardiff Uni’s Engineering building
- Social Sustainability business breakfast
- ICE Exec Board Xmas dinner
Plenty of free grub but they’ve also given me food for thought on some of the big issues that’ll challenge Civil Engineers in the future……

Monday’s lecture on IT in Civil Engineering presented interesting theories for the way design and construction teams will work in the future. Tony Sudworth suggested communication and collaborative working tools similar to facebook and Wikipedia will become the norm for business applications, and discussed the concept of truly remote teams with instant access to central projects. The Halcrow Studio (a section my company have sponsored in the refurbished Trevithick Library) was officially opened on the same night and I called in with Alun to take a look. Here's some photos:





The social sustainability breakfast meeting (awesome fry up in the Novotel btw) drew up some heated debate between the Assembly’s top procurement guru and the Director of CECA (representing Welsh Contractors) on how industry and government could/should be driving change in social sustainability issues through the economic downturn. This linked to unemployment, investment and education. Interesting to hear that 22% of welsh people do ‘civil’ work (employed by government), and that doesn’t include those employed by money the government spends. Gareth Morgan from the Assembly suggested industry needs to innovate to reduce dependency on state money, and drive an economy of its own. A big challenge but I can see the point. Industry needs to adapt and generate a skill/service that we can export outside of Wales.

Thursday was the Halcrow Christmas party in the Yard at lunchtime. I stayed on the shandies (as much as possible) to try and save myself for the ICE Exec Board dinner Mr Grif held later on at the uber posh Walnut Tree restaurant in Abergavenny. It was worth saving myself for as the food and drink was just about as good as it gets. Awesome night and a nice opportunity to get to know the Board members on a more personal level. Alun’s hospitality and company was, as always, fantastic. I didn’t go for the sweetbread starter though. Yikes!

Sloped into the office the next day nursing a hangover, and ended up had a good long chat with Barrie (my Halcrow Regional Director) about what I’d been up to lately. Barrie’s always enthusiastic to get us young ‘uns thinking about innovative subjects, and after talking through all the above we came up with some fresh ideas which we’re going to work on – The concept is tackling sustainability, using links between academia/industry/the Institution and Government and implementing innovative communication methods and aligning with the goals of ICE (look back at the ICE State of the Nation Report on Low Carbon Infrastructure), government, academia, industry, society and so on and so on. Centred around utilising the Studio and maybe in the future integrating with the WATT Centre (if you don’t know about the WATT centre, it’s an idea currently being working on for Wales, Think of it as going to be an advanced Techniquest for Civil Engineering). This all made me feel like there’s a load of big jigsaw pieces in front of us, and we just need to shuffle them round and make them work. Hmmmm…….thinking caps on…….

I think this’ll be me last post of 2009 so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all. Thanks for reading

Meetings and Lectures - but no Tequilas......

I’ve had a busy time this week. Tuesday saw my first Committee meeting at Bay Chambers and I somehow got roped into taking the minutes! As scary as that first sounded it turned out to be a good way to learn everyone’s name, plus it made sure I kept track of everything that was going on (just!).

Wednesday night was the ‘Menelaus’ lecture and dinner. A prestigious annual event that this year also celebrated 25 years of WISE (Women in Science and Engineering). The lecture on development of 'silent' aircraft was very different to the civil enginnering topics we normally see. Professer Dame Anne Dowling's use of contraptions made from hairdryers and vacuum cleaners to demonstrate noise sources similar to aviation was great for helping understand the problems, but also made me chuckle at the irony of domestic appliances at a WISE event!

Here's the result of the research - a new style of plane. The big differences are the engines on top of the aircraft, plus its unusual shape. Will easyjet be taking you over to Kos in something like this soon? Maybe! Or at least something incorporating aspects of the tech?



The dinner afterwards at Aberdare Hall (that red brick building at the end of park place) had a great atmosphere. Mr G, some of the ICE Wales Committee members and I all had a chat with Peter Hansford (the next ICE President) over drinks before dinner. I had also met Peter at the State of the Nation Launch at OGGS the other week, and both times found him to be a very friendly guy and easy to chat to.

At dinner I was sat next to Keith Thomas, who I found out used to be Director for Transportation at what is now Transport Wales, and is now ICE Wales' Panel Member for Historical Works. His knowledge of transportation history in Wales was fascinating, as were his opinions on current big issues such as the need for an M4 relief road. Not only that, he was actually quite a good laugh!

Here's one of those embaressing after dinner photos of (left to right): Margaret Everson (Hon. Secretary CILT Cymru), Gemma Hancock (Chairman of ICE Graduates and Students Committee), Keith and me:



Thursday was the G&S Committee Xmas meeting at Las Iguanas. Unfortunately a cold I'd been struggling with all week finally got the best of me so I had to spend the night on the sofa watching 'I'm a Celeb' rather than hitting the fajitas and tequilas with Gemma's crowd. A shame as I was looking forward to getting to know the fine people of G&S better. I'll definitely be at the next one!

State of the Nation Launch - Wales

Following on from the national State of the Nation launch, 26th November was Wales’ turn and I have to say - our version did us proud. Firstly Mr G addressed us on the critical messages of the ‘Low Carbon Infrastructure’ report, aimed at helping us meet the tough emission targets government has set. Basically that:

- Government needs to create and environment to make lifecycle carbon impact of infrastructure key to decision making.
- Infrastructure managers need to develop carbon efficiency.
- Us Engineers must be more systematic in considering carbon impact when we design and deliver infrastructure.

Wales has set itself even tougher standards than the rest of the UK and, stood in the Senedd’s ‘Oriel’ Gallery, you couldn’t help but get inspired to achieve them. One of the main reasons for the success of our launch was the support of Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing Jane Davidson AM. In accepting the report she was extremely complimentary of ICE’s work both informing Government and driving forward change in industry and society.

Another theme of the report was making low carbon behaviour the norm, and discussing how people will have to adapt to achieve an 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050. It makes you think – what is going to have to change to achieve that? Mass electrification of vehicles is going through some serious tests right now, so Engineers need to be on hand to develop the supporting infrastructure and facilitate the critical ‘greening of the grid’. One of the coolest ideas on the table is ‘inductive charging’, where your vehicle is charged ‘on-the-go’ by a system implanted in the road. It might be a serious proposition for larger built up areas (and removes the need for massive batteries). The big decisions between which systems we choose have an air of ‘VHS v Betamax’ about them, so there’s some serious challenges ahead for Engineers to make sure our eggs go in the right baskets…..

You can see the full report and the Wales briefing note here: http://www.ice.org.uk/state_of_the_nation/index.asp

A couple of photos from the event, taken by a very professional photographer with one of those huge lenses!:

Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing Jane Davidson AM:



ICE Wales Cymru Chairman, Alun Griffths and I: