Smeaton established the society to share experience in tackling challenges relating to civil engineering. Taking the long view of infrastructure delivery, what is our theory of change to deliver benefits for people and planet in the most efficient way? Specifically, can we pinpoint:

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Question 1: “Which interventions have succeeded (or not) and what can we learn from them?”

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Question 2: “What underpinning assumptions have we made and how has that turned out?”

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Asset life cycle

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Timescales

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Creating major new infrastructure takes time and, in a faster changing and unstable era, is becoming ever more challenging.

 

An infrastructure investment must protect the future (30 yrs plus) which requires realistic compromise of current needs for the advantage of the future. Passive provision within a scheme enables future expansion or flexibility and should be actively promoted as a benefit rather than defended as overcapacity.

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Conceptual support does not constitute a specification for construction.

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Stability of requirements and programmes is key both to cost efficient development and approval. Stability reinforces confidence in the proposed scope and benefits leading to continued support from interested parties.

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The political cycle is a significant issue. The mismatch with extended development lifecycles is all too evident with multiple core stakeholders on major projects.

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The lack of routine, permanent engineering, asset and infrastructure knowledge in strategic government thinking is retrograde. Strategic infrastructure thinking needs to be owned at Cabinet Office level.

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The retention of high-calibre civil servants is challenging and there appears to be a failure to grasp the importance of infrastructure. This becomes more evident when funding is required for more immediate and vote-worthy activities such as health and national defence.  NITSA will provide continuity of message and will require persistence to transcend the increasingly feverish political landscape

 

Assets as part of a system

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Funding, deliverables and sponsorship

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Comparing major government funded programmes with smaller scale, privately funded repeatable programmes highlights the different challenges presented by each. Publicly funded major projects are obliged to have significant governance.

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Privately funded projects are more agile and more focussed on realising profit which should not be confused with value-for-money.  Successful private sector projects tend to have a single person as the guiding brain throughout the project, with a very clear view as to the required outcome and a high degree of personal control.

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Smaller projects can achieve better sustainable outcomes for the community because they often achieve personal engagement.  Larger projects need to scale up that personal and community engagement for positive results.

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Project definition, connection to existing systems and measurement of success

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Many new projects derive from green field thinking because of the perceived ease and hence lower risk and costs which will occur. Privately funded schemes are usually self-contained with limited spheres of influence and interest. The desire for speed of delivery and certainty of result often beguile scheme sponsors as to the full system development challenges which are required to deliver societal benefits as opposed to an asset (or liability).

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There has been great success with offshore wind energy generation, the National Grid has not kept pace

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Given the “sunk costs” of pre-existing infrastructure, irrespective of age or condition, the importance of focus on outcome, not outputs, was a recurrent theme. The condition and potential for expansion, or adaption, of current infrastructure requires realism and honesty about original design assumptions, current “spare” capacity and condition. Future system requirements need to consider all associated and related interfaces and should recognise that great UK cities evolved rather than being imposed. 

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Systems thinking and essential skills lead into the learning development considerations discussed later.

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Importance of measurement

It is necessary to choose measures with care to drive the right outcomes, for example in maritime the focus on “decarbonisation” is leading to the development of ammonia-powered ships which do not produce carbon but produce significant amounts of other GHG (oxides of nitrogen) and are dangerous to handle (potentially requiring full body PPE)

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It is possible to measure social impact, for example considering social impact of technologies, transportation systems.

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Goodhart’s Law needs to be considered – “When a measure becomes a target, it seeks to be a good measure

 

Defining the correct specification – the start of the lifecycle.

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Greater understanding of the asset lifecycle and clarity of the development goals assists all parties. Simply identifying the planning process as a significant blocker to progress is unhelpful, the incorrect asset can still be specified and built.

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At concept stage, a detailed brief with stakeholder alignment, is essential, written by a team of knowledgeable people including engineers. It requires the right balance between Economic, Social and Environmental benefits in order that all areas of society can understand both the “What” and the “Why” of the scheme, not simply the “When, Where and How”.

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Accommodation of local stakeholder concerns can be a significant benefit to a project. Greater stakeholder engagement can additionally give confidence to funding sources concerning the likelihood of success, potentially leading to lower interest rates.

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Confidence in a fixed and realistic specification enables design and delivery of the core assets. The design should be significantly complete before any construction starts and that changes after the start should be avoided at all costs (particularly changes in the scope etc driven by client changes in the specification).

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Delivery of the project is relatively straightforward given the significant knowledge and access to international joint ventures and collaboration. The knowledge learnt on such ventures is frequently lost when the project disbands. A pipeline of schemes which will justify the investment in people and skills is required.

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Whilst becoming more widely understood, the demographic profile of experienced practitioners is challenging.  Accelerating training in large numbers makes practical implementation difficult. Lifestyle, earning expectations and competing occupations are wider societal challenges for civil engineering to address.

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Maintenance of new infrastructure which connects to existing systems often falls to the pre-existing organisation.  The implications need to be quantified on performance, resource and opportunity to deliver the expectations of the investment particularly long-term maintenance and renewal budgets.

 

Through life ownership and accountability

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Organisational shape and ownership

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There is rarely a “golden thread” of ownership running through the asset lifecycle and ownership cycle.

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The importance of a political interest and a political lead for public sector projects is recognised. This should be tempered by concern that public sector leads may not be an “informed person” who understanding the system issues.

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The fragmented sequence of scope definition, investment availability, installation and maintenance can see risks passed along the lifecycle despite the best intentions of the CDM Regulations. Asset owners often seek to export their accountability through contracts or employing specialists.

 

Responsibility for building a new environment is relatively straight forward. Maintaining old infrastructure, the engineer is not designing to factors of safety, rather managing factors of uncertainty.  If the engineer keeps closing or taking assets out of use, it undermines both society and the standing of engineers.

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Engineers should take responsibility.  Irrespective of company position or hierarchy.

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Changing societal expectations

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The changing demands and expectations of society require existing assets to be re-assessed and enhanced with minimum destruction and waste. Improvement in existing housing stock by better services, insulation of the buildings, improved transport links and better digital connectivity are all proposed.  It was highlighted that digital connectivity is a pressing priority for rural and isolated communities.

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The point was made that the ageing population will shift demand for workers to provide many more local carers. 

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A positive example of how large scale change has in the past been achieved is the transition to natural gas in the 1960s/70s

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It was recognised however that a more deferential culture in that era was more willing to accept the enforced change than is generally the case today. Adoption of water meters and heat pumps are examples

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The gas transition illustrates two important points: -

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Modularity of solution to avoid multiple designs and leverage the continuous improvement through learning from implementation

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A rolling programme containing input volume are key ingredients to successful programmes

 

Knowledge and learning development

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It must be recognised that Leading exposes people to risk - reputational, legal potentially, and personal exposure and stress.  Again, selecting and educating engineers must focus on equipping them with the wider skills needed to give them the confidence to withstand these pressures.

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Engineers increasingly need to be able to communicate at all levels of non-technical organisations. Engineers need to be able to converse with accountable leaders in terms that are recognised and go beyond simply monetary value.

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We do need to make managing and adapting the huge volume of existing infrastructure more attractive to able engineers, valuing decisions which appropriately avoid wholesale capital programmes and “shiny new stuff”.   Posts which enable wider, pan-functional accountability are to be encouraged.

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Is now the time to re-introduce the concept of the Municipal Engineer?

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We need to develop "T-shaped" engineers who have a deep knowledge of a specialism but a broad understanding of how everything fits together.  At present many aspects of university learning and development place depth of knowledge in a single subject over understanding the wider societal applications of civil engineering.

 

Conclusions

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Societal, environmental and humanitarian systems need to be considered in the whole from the outset of schemes. “Build it and they will come” is no longer a viable mantra for sustainable development.

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Individuals need to consider their longer-term development of knowledge and skills with a growing awareness that communities develop and thrive when supported by infrastructure.

Engineers need to have the skills to lead wider social and ethical discussion on building sustainable assets, not just be builders focussed on maximising profit.

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The country needs significant engineers of presence in government to draw government together rather than focus on individual departments.

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Appendix

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Successes

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Renewable Energy generation – success because of political imperative and offshore planning success

 

2012 Olympics – success because of good ministerial leadership and fixed deadline is a positive incentive to all parties involved

 

Rosie Maternity Hospital, Cambridge – success because of fixed deadline – funder would remove the funding if not opened on time

 

Milton Keynes Green Lung – success because of legally enforceable framework for public benefit and it is an existing railway line

 

HS2 – commitment to doing local good – success because of legally binding commitments in the Bill

 

RAEng Policy Fellowships programme offers policymakers an opportunity to enhance their skills by integrating engineering perspectives into public policy – success because of engagement between policymakers and RAEng Fellows, with the originally sceptical policymakers realising that the Fellows can help

 

Sustainable aviation – success because of government intervention has brought the whole eco-system together – suppliers, airports, finance with aligned incentives

 

Areas for improvement

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We are not good at strategic thinking and following through

 

We need more Chief Engineers in government departments with the same credibility as Chief Scientists

 

Engineers need to speak up more

Lack of clear ownership and leadership; Corporate Manslaughter Act creates more complex organisations and lack of clarity of accountability

 

UK record is not good compared with other European countries or China – do our learning experiences stay in this country or return abroad?

 

HS2 – clearly not a success in terms of budget, programme or scope, and some of its spending on sustainable issues has been questionable (e.g. the bat tunnel)

 

Promoters need to take more care of the communities they impact and listen to them to turn them to an asset rather than opposition

 

Underpinning assumptions - correct or challenging

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As engineers we can solve anything

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We understand systems

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Planning issues are a blocker

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Public sector leads are always knowledgeable

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