NEWS
Nominations for the 2024 Smeaton Medal are now open and will close on 31st May 2024. Click here for more details. Click here to submit an application.
2024 is the 300th Anniversary of the birth of John Smeaton. Click here for details of some of the events that the Society has been made aware of.
2018 Smeaton Medal Winner Grzegorz Marecki, a graduate of Heriot Watt University, has developed his prizewinning work on the hyperloop strategy into planning of routes for power utilities to address the need for smarter decision making as energy needs grow. His company, Continuum Industries, now has over 40 employees in London and New York and has secured over £10m of investor funding in the last year. The Society congratulates Grzegorz on his achievement.
The society will be holding a dinner to welcome new members of the Society on 24th January 2024 at the Institution of Civil Engineers. Click here for a list of current members.
Mr Tony Roche has been elected President of the Society for 2024.
The 2023 Smeaton Lecture was given by First Class member Professor Peter Guthrie on the topic of "Sustainable development: from Smeaton to the 21st century" on 11th December 2023 at the Institution of Civil Engineers and online. Click here to see the ICE report on the event or a recording of the lecture. An informal dinner was held after the discussion.
The Society held its AGM on 29th November 2023, following which it held a dinner at which member HRH The Princess Royal presented the Smeaton Medal to this year's winner.
The 2023 Smeaton medal has been awarded to Helen Wild of Sellafield, continuing the theme of engineering in hostile environments for her work on managing risk decommissioning the UK's nuclear legacy. A report on the presentation and ensuing discussion dinner can be found here.
The Society held its annual luncheon at the RAF Club in Piccadilly on 26th October. First Class member and Past President Sir John Armitt briefed members on the recently published National Infrastructure Assessment.
The Society held a discussion dinner on 24th May 2023 on the subject of "The Future of Transport - A Wicked Problem" introduced by Professor Sarah Sharples, Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Transport. Click here to see a precis of the discussions.
The society held its annual President's dinner on 26th April 2023 at the Institution of Civil Engineers.
The Society held a discussion dinner on 29th March 2023 on the subject of "Medical Engineering" introduced by Professor Gordon Blunn, Director of Heath and Well Being at Portsmouth University. Click here to see a report of the discussion.
The Society of Civil Engineers was founded in 1771 by John Smeaton and some of his professional acquaintances as a dining club to facilitate ‘conversation, argument and a social communication of ideas and knowledge, in the particular walks of each member were, at the same time, the amusement and business of the meetings’. The Society met in London once a fortnight, at 7 o’clock from Christmas to the end of the sitting of Parliament.
The Society was the first to adopt the name ‘civil engineer’ as a new profession, as distinct from the much older calling of military engineer. Following the death of Smeaton in 1792 the Society was revived as the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. The Society is the oldest society of engineers in the world and embraces engineers of all disciplines. It predates the Institution of Civil Engineers founded in 1818. Members are known as ‘The Smeatonians’
