Metrics; measurements with purpose. It’s a term I’d long left associated with those business managers that trade buzzwords with each other; inheriting, instead, the engineer’s standard unit- a deliverable. And deliverables are important; key performance indicators of beams designed per-hour or daily count of piles driven (OK, I’m being a bit facetious) are nothing compared to handing over a complete and functioning bit of infrastructure.

Last week I went to a talk from an enthusiastic young man from everyone’s favourite online takeaway service. The topic- Metric Driven Development. It’s fair to say that software developers have a real fascination with building and analyzing their processes; and in my short working life I’ve already seen the rise (and somewhat fall) of Test and Behaviour (Driven Development) approaches. But that’s what makes it so interesting…

So what is this metric driven development? Would it surprise you to learn that you’re already part of it? You click on the order button- was it always on the right? that took a moment or two to find- and stall for a bit at the checkout; unsure on whether you really need everything in your basket. But there’s that timer going; seems this deal is only for a short while. Best click through. Ahh, this site never remembers you payment details. The saving isn’t that great in any case- let it go. Have you seen that video with the hedgehog in the bath?

Every single step of that process has been measured (assuming this online store is using metrics). And someone is defining insights; goals. They know that 20% of people, like you, have dropped out at the last hurdle. And so they launch a few campaigns to inform a decision- 10% of visitors are now being offered PayPal as a checkout, and another 10% are being offered to save their card details. The monitoring continues- it turns out just offering to save the details only increases conversion by 5% (perhaps people resent all data entry?), but that PayPal link improves things by 10%. Slowly but surely all visitors are being invited to use PayPal…

There’s a lot of talk about in this example. Firstly let’s establish that their ultimate goal is to convert you from a browser into a sale. The metrics they collect are used to inform their design. They’ve targeted aspects that they think can inform decisions; not only watching your journey but also the speed at which you make it. In a previous incarnation people once gave up after spending too long considering their choice at the checkout- thanks to the timer, they no longer do this.

Although people slow down a bit finding the right buttons, the point where they lose the sale is when they ask for payment. So, following a development driven by metrics, it makes sense to target this aspect first. However it’s hard to know exactly how to solve this problem, so they prove their solution by doing something called A/B testing. They try both of the solutions they’ve considered, and see which one performs the best. Building an architecture to store payment data, is expensive so you want to be sure before you invest.

The last manifestation of the metric driven approach is more subtle. Despite PayPal being a clear way to improve conversions- they didn’t just roll it out in one day. Using an approach called feature toggling, they slowly switched it on for users. This allows them to use performance metrics to ensure they don’t bump into any problems; constantly verifying the health and load to inform decisions on how to scale it up from 10 to 100% of their customers.

I hope that the advantages of metric driven development are fairly clear. You get a very clear goal to inform every decision you make; I want to increase the measure of X, will Y do that? It follows a very scientific principle; hypothesise, experiment, evaluate, respond. Failures can be spotted faster, as can changes; by integrating instrumentation it’s easy to spot trends, and verify that what you put in to achieve something continues to do so.

One thing is for certain, civil engineering isn’t software engineering- however I don’t think that means that ideas are mutually exclusive. In my last post I talked about cost and consequences, and hinted at a need for instrumentation (that’s just the technical term for measurement equipment) as part of our infrastructure [Ed. There was even a comment about it.]. These days instrumentation is cheap, as is data processing.

There’s a few spaces where a metric driven approach might help construction. Starting at the most mundane, simply measuring how long it takes to achieve something and setting it as a metric to reduce can be surprisingly powerful. Sure- everyone in construction wants a fast turn around, but unless you make a formal statement of this you’ll just be using anecdotal balances and it’ll be hard to justify and discover exactly what you did that made it so fast/slow.

However, management theory aside, I think there’s some more exciting applications. Consider our infrastructure as one giant system. The goal is to get people from A to B as fast as possible. How do we evolve that system? Every new junction provides an opportunity for massive scale A/B testing– each with it’s own unique feature that either lives or dies based on the relative improvement. Measuring traffic flow is easy; it’s coordinating the results that will be the hard part.

Or one step further. A structure built of metrics. A bridge wired with sensors. Using the responses from the sensors to evolve the design– sending across the first car, measuring the response and strengthening accordingly. Slowly rolling out to more and more traffic and making the adjustments as discovered- entertaining new prospects through the A/B pattern; toggling structural aspects to manage their effect. Sure, a more modular construction approach would be needed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up with a more efficient structure that was easier to build (as it had to be built as we went along). And, of course, you’d learn a lot.

It’s clear from my most extreme example that the approach is more of a science than a traditional engineering one. Alone it’s much more of a fool doing for a pound than a precision penny; lots of guesswork and learning through feedback. However the role of the engineer in this scenario is to interpret the metrics and suggest appropriate responses. Something, you might argue, that your average civil engineer already does!

Of course, in our current system this is a bit of a pipe dream, however as a thought experiment it’s an interesting one.

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About once a month my train to work is delayed. There are signal failures, over running works, unexpected weather; the litany of excuses is endless. Only last week I sat in Waterloo and watched hours of trains get canceled because of ‘a lot of rain and some lightning‘. Every time something like this happens my unplanned ‘time to reflect’ on a busy station platform is punctuated with a prerecorded voice that somehow tries to make the current predicament sound like an unpredictable act of God that just couldn’t have been avoided.

As an engineer, I know that’s not true.

Infrastructure is a game of cost and consequences; the built environment- a giant gamble. When my train is canceled due to flooding on the track; it is more correctly canceled because there was more rain than we felt it was worth paying to defend against. The signals fail because of conditions considered too unlikely to be worth the cost of coping. The network grinds to a halt because the rewards of running at a high capacity most of the time are thought to outweigh the penalty of being able to recover quickly when something happens.

Civil engineering is a compromise. We are the insurers against nature. At some point, someone decided that fortifying our rail network against anything above a 1:x storm would be an unjustifiable expense. Engineers took that brief and designed a drainage system that would fail after an acceptable threshold had been met. It would not have been impossible for my journey last week to have been completely unaffected by the storm the night before; just more expensive.

And it’s not just the nature of events that we have taken a punt at. Our structures our built from materials and to loads laced with uncertainty. We expect our steel to be ~5% weaker than it is; our loads to be ~50% more than we specified; the resulting product to be ~25-50mm eccentric from our drawings. Sure, some concrete will be even less than the ~75% of specified strength we’ve accounted for; but we’re satisfied that it’s a risk worth taking- the point where further mitigation is no longer worth it.

What fascinates me the most, however, is that we do very little to verify our forays with chance. Have you ever checked back to see if your 1:50 year drainage scheme survived the last storm? Can you tell me just how underutilised one of your structures was during its life? Is your road already filled with traffic despite it only being 10 years old? And if you had that knowledge; what would you do with it?

Engineers deal in cost and consequence; but in the built environment we rarely investigate either. In many cases the scope and mitigation for risk is mandated to us- through codes; through specifications. A lot of the time this is useful, it saves us a lot of justification. But it also robs us of the chance to learn and adapt. It discourages us from looking further- building risk and reward profiles for our clients: Yes, said track meets the 1:50 year storm requirement- but it wouldn’t be much harder to meet the 1:100 year storm; What’s that worth to you?

Because it might just be worth two hours of my time, every couple of months…

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In keeping with tradition, this week I’ll be taking a look at the deepest structures in the world. Having celebrated the most visible of our achievements, it seems only fitting that I turn my figurative eye to where the majority of our engineering goes- the invisible!

I’ve had to cheat a bit to keep this list interesting. I’ve only allowed one borehole, or else we’ll just have oil explorations everywhere. Similarly, I’ve limited each mine to only be represented by its deepest shaft to save this becoming a tour of our deepest mines. As Google would put it- I’ve removed to similar duplicate results…

Schacht Asse II Repository

At 768m, this German ex-salt mine is already nearly as deep as most of the world’s tallest buildings are tall. Most of the depth was achieved in its first two years (1906-1908), however it was used as a potash and then salt mine until 1964. Now it lives out its days as a nuclear waste store.

Mizunami Research Laboratory

Another store for radioactive waste, this Japanese research project is now 1000m deep. The aim of the MIU Project is to research the techniques required in the burial (or geological) disposal of radioactive waste; one of the primary challenges in nuclear energy.

Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Buried 2100m underground in Ontario, Canada lies a neutrino observatory. Constructed in 1999, this 18m ball of heavy water is tucked away from cosmic rays so that the neutrino interactions can be more easily distinguished. I’m not even going to attempt to explain this- so checkout Nobel Prise winner Art McDonald’s explanation.

TauTona Mine

The only still working mine in this list, the TauTona mine in South Africa is approximately 3900m deep. Initially sunk in 1957, this literal gold mine is one of the most profitable of its kind; even if the substantial depth means the rock face temperatures achieve 60deg!

Kola Superdeep Borehole

If the name doesn’t give you a hint of its depth, that this borehole was the basis of a myth that we dug a well to hell should be! Starting in 1970 the Soviet Union set off on a project to drill as deep as possible into the world’s crust. Achieving 12’262m in 1989, they still hold the record for the deepest artificial point on Earth; where they discovered mud ‘boiling with hydrogen’.

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It’s not a secret that I like the IABSE Future of Design conferences. Normally my pre-conference build-up focuses on the speakers, however today I’d like to just quickly draw your attention to the two, now open, competitions that are run before, and as part of the event.

The One Page Paper Competition

Since I’ve been attending there has always been the paper competition. Whilst this might sound the least inspiring, it’s something that I would urge more engineers to enter. One thing we’re really bad at doing is both recognising and sharing our achievements with each other– and frankly, where else are you going to find a room full of people who might get excited about that complicated bolt connection?

I think the most important bit about the paper competition is that it’s only one page.

Yes engineers are busy people. But it only takes 300 words to fill a page (if you throw in a diagram; and everyone loves a diagram). Even if you only wrote five words every minute, you’d still finish your entry before an episode of Game of Thrones was over. Almost by definition you, as an engineer, solve interesting problems; so don’t underestimate how exciting your work is by thinking it’s not worth the competition!

The Design Competition

The newer of the competitions is the design competition, which I first saw last year. For this, teams of up to three young designers bandy together in an attempt to put forward an A2 poster outlining their proposed solutions to an unusual design brief.

This year the entrants are challenged to support a sculpture of Alex Chinneck. Perhaps most famous for “Take my lightening but don’t steal my thunder”, the building that appeared at the front of Covent Garden, apparently cracked straight along the middle with the top half hanging eerily in the air…

For the 2016 brief the teams must work out how to support an inverted pylon. An idea iterating Chenneck’s “A bullet from a floating star” (pictured in the post header), which sees a pylon sticking from the ground, point down- like it had been harpooned from the sky. The question is, how are you going to keep it up?

Both competitions are now open, and run until the 11th of July (although the Design Competition has a shorter ‘questions’ period that closes on the 15th of June.) The short listed entrants will be part of the IABSE FoD 2016, either as presenters of their papers or having their designs exhibited; with prizes on offer for the winners of both.

• More about the IABSE Future of Design 2016
• Details of the Paper Competition
• Details of the Design Competition / Registration Form

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“It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong”

Attributed to John Maynard Keynes (an economist), few quotes so accurately reflect my experience in design. Throughout my career I’ve become increasingly technical- I even sit in a dedicated analysis team! I have a dirty little secret, however; if I can get away with doing something simply by hand, I always will.

The fact is, in these modern times, especially as an under-/graduate, it’s easy to find yourself elbow deep in code clauses and finite element analysis output without a sound understanding of how/if what you’re designing actually works. And while the digitalisation of design is an exciting prospect; computers are fallible, and programmers even more so– garbage in, garbage out.

Hugh Morrison’s “Structural Engineering: Art and Approximation” focuses on what he terms “a visual approach to design”. The book aims to help engineers (and architects) learn how to get a ‘feel’ (lit. approximation) for how a structure should be behaving and the magnitude of forces, etc. that it should be supporting. This really is a key skill, and one I, at least, definitely suffered from never being explicitly taught.

Starting with an appraisal of what it means to structurally engineer something (firmitatis, utilitatis, venustatis), Morrison starts to build his foundations with simply supported beams; increasing complexity of form all the way up to fabric structures and dynamics. You might roll your eyes at having to review simply supported beams; but I wonder how many of you really know that maximum deflection of a cantilever is 10 times that of a simply supported beam, and how you can use that information to validate designs quickly…

What the book does best is walk the line between mathematics/physics and codes. There are no long derivations of formulae; you won’t be told how to Hardy Cross fixed moments, but you will be reminded why. And there are also very few mentions of the codes; “because ASCE says” is not the reason something works structurally- of course, you do have to get it to work the your codes, but that’s not how you design it.

Instead this book focuses on how to engineer structures through art and approximation. You won’t come away with a detailed knowledge of everything, but it’ll at least set you on the track to being able to see if a design is sensible, if your validation method is appropriate and the questions you should be asking your specialists. And in a field as diverse as engineering (the nine pages on fabric structures now represents my sum-total knowledge of them,) that’s a useful thing to have.

What I also liked about the book, was its gateway nature. There’s quite a few references to other, more detailed, texts on each of the major subjects- so if you find yourself being drawn into the world of tension rings, you will be pointed in the right direction. (n.b. I’d like to take this moment to remind ICE members that you have access to a huge library of engineering books…)

I think this book has a few audiences. I would recommend it to all graduates entering design, it’s a way to get some judgement that normally takes a few years of experience. I’d say it’s a helpful tombe for those entering conceptual design, also, where spending six months doing a detailed study of bridge vibration won’t make anyone happy. And I’d also recommended it for the chartered engineer who has been managing too long and the technicals who could do with a bit of broadening.

Structural Engineering: Art and Approximation

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Machine learning is the topic of the hour; so in an attempt to stay relevant I thought I’d join in and share some of my own experience. Genetic algorithms are a ‘learning’ approach that can be used to find the optimum from a problem where there are millions of potential solutions, without having to test them all.

The Life of a GA.

The metaphor is fairly simple, if not incredibly brutal:

Day One: Encoding

It all begins when an uncaring God decides to define a creature chromosome. This chromosome can take many forms, but at its simplest it’s a series of on-off switches representing various states (furriness, pointed ears, fangs, etc.). This is called the encoding stage; the form of the solution is defined.

Day Two: Genesis

Happy with the creature definition, our God randomly creates a large(ish) population of the critters, each with a different chromosome, and puts them in a pen for safe keeping. This is the seed that will be used to start the ball rolling. These individuals (or creatures, in our case) are unlikely to be the solution we were looking for; but that doesn’t matter; they are cheap to create.

Day Three: The Hunger Games

Next, our lovable individuals are all tested against a number of qualifiers (marketability, tendency to turn evil if fed after midnight, etc.) and branded with a score. This is the fitness test, it allows us to rank our current population to find out which are beginning to show the qualities we are looking for in our optimised solution.

Day Four: Rapture

We unleash the velociraptors; only the fittest survive. There’s blood everywhere, and only a small percentage of our population remain- those with the highest fitness ranking. If you believe in nature, these poor, frightened, critters are our best hope to find our solution. Their unfit peers were just taking up memory, representing dead ends on our journey to perfection.

Day Five: The Percy Sledge Chapter

Here’s where it gets weird. We begin to play matchmaker for the remaining traumatised and bewildered creations. But because we don’t want our populace to become so homogeneous that it misses other viable options (becomes trained too early); we blast the new offspring with radiation- randomly mutating their chromosomes. This adds entropy, without which the algorithm can become ‘fixated’ on the first slightly rewarding condition and miss something better.

Day Six: Episode Five

The cycle begins again, ad infinitum (well, almost)- pitting mutant children against their own parents and even grandparents, each successive population is tested, culled and bred. The rules of evolution are clear; the desired (most successful) attributes will start to propagate, and (without variations in the fitness tests), our population will become trained on producing offspring more and more apt at surviving.

Day Seven: The Black Sabbath

Finally the rate of improvement begins to dwindle, and a pair of hands reach out from the sky and pluck out the fittest of the fittest; the creature with the highest ranking- our optimum solution. Looking down at the awed faces of its family and comrades- it is the first to see the bombs drop. Afterwards our perfect creature sits alone on the ledge of the pit- the sole survivor of a brutal algorithm. And the answer our God was looking for.

In Civil Engineering

Genetic algorithms are at their best when they are finding the ‘best’ of a vast array of potential solutions, and where there is a clear relationship between changes in attributes and the fitness of the resulting individual. Although the above example is cruel, our creatures are actually fairly lucky- had we set out on a brute force approach (literally trying every permutation) we would have had to slaughter millions of them. By creating small samples and combining the attributes of the fittest, we are likely to converge on the best solution after a few tens of generations.

In civil and structural engineering this approach lends itself to goal seeking and optimisation. For example, in calibrating a material model you can apply a genetic algorithm to converge on the properties that match the test data. Similarly, there is the opportunity to use them to find the optimum design for a given set of rules.

In my (limited) experience, I would suggest

• Keep your encoding as simple as possible. The clearer the relationship between chromosome change and fitness, the faster you’ll converge on a solution.
• Your fitness function has to be quick to evaluate. If you find yourself talking about doing a finite element analysis, for example, you need to simplify.
• Breeding and mutation can be calibrated, but you’ll get the best solutions if the way you combine your chromosomes ‘persists’ what was best in the parents. A common pitfall, for example, is separating two inter-related attributes so that the resulting ‘positive’ is lost.

If you’re intrigued and fancy giving them a go, I would recommend taking a look at DEAP, which is a Python library that provides the mathematical base of the Genetic Algorithm approach; ‘all’ you need to do is provide a way of encoding and measuring the fitness of your problem/solution.

Welcome to the future!

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If you haven’t heard of the IABSE Future of Design events (then you should at least read the first post of this two-parter)- they’re a series of conferences aimed at celebrating and sharing the best of (structural) design. This year saw the first FoD outside of London; venturing up to Manchester to enjoy the famous rain.

This is the second half of my highlights from the FoD North 2015; however I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to some important omissions. First- the networking, unlike any other engineering conference I’ve been to- the crowd is (relatively) young, and incredibly enthusiastic. Second- the day ended with a fantastic meal in the Museum of Science & Industry, with a fun live band. And last, but not least- the day after there was a walking tour of the bridges, culminating in two specially arranged bridge lifts; where else would you get that? 

Chris Wise (Expedition)

If ever an engineer is to win the “best Steve Jobs” impersonation; it’s going to be Chris Wise. From the turtleneck, to the effortless presentation style- putting the artist back into technology. Wise started off with a look at the struggles of collaboration; tabling the view that the tendency to collaborate is inversely proportional to familiarity with the solution. Continuing to echo some of the themes of the day; he reiterated that engineers should make the end-users the “designers”- clients are a means to an end.

The latter half of Wise’s presentation looked at his theories of the different styles of engineering-minds. Beginning with a look at the specialist/generalist divide, Wise suggested that the best teams were formed of people who had a strong specialism while maintaining a broad enough foundation to interface with others; voicing a concern that rewarding specialism reduces those who can take a step-back and guide projects as a whole.

Finishing with an exercise to determine what sort of ‘design mind’ you have. Wise guided the audience through a series of questions (try it here yourself) that eventually declared you either an artist- someone who finds it easy to create, but doesn’t care for the detail; an artisan who find it hard to start but seek perfection on what they do; or a philosopher who seeks meaning. Urging us to take note, Wise warned against the challenges of trying to ‘think’ against your grain; recommending instead, to find a complementary team. 

Young Designers

Giulia Evelina Fenci (University of Salford), Christopher Bevington (Amey), Ben Luckin (AECOM), Jagvinder Singh (AECOM), Karl James (Parsons Brinckerhoff), Devaraja Rajan (Ramboll)

Where would a conference called the “future of design” be without a young designers competition? Here, twelve promising designers take to stage to share some of the exciting and innovative work they’ve been doing! Because the room splits, I’m only able to share the six I saw; but no doubt the other half were just as engaging!

Fenchi started us off by sharing how she used the blooming flower to influence the design of a minimum-deployment energy ‘unfolding’ fabric structure by applying parametric/holistic optimisation across the time-steps. Bevington talked us through his work at Chorley Tunnel and its flying arches; listed and ornate props that needed to be lifted as part of electrification works. His was a story of unexpected expectations; learning the thought process of English Heritage, who were much more interested in retaining the elements, than their position or behaviour.

Luckin shared his experience designing twelve themed bridges for Chester Zoo– explaining the difficulties of designing a ‘broken’ bridge that was still safe; or a DDA compliant rope swing bridge! Singh returned us to the northern hub to talk through his BIM experience; it’s not 3D modelling- it’s about intelligence; pointing more towards model federation and point clouds than just the third dimension.

James provided us with some impressive Excel wizardry– showing how he’d taken the strut and tie method to a new level; investigating the effects of concrete damage on the reinforcement of deck beams. Rajan finished off with the impressive demonstration that undertaking a proper nonlinear critical moment finite element analysis was enough to improve the ultimate LTB capacity of plate girder bridges by 25% (45% at the midspan). 

Discussion Panel

Tom Wallace (WSP), Lee Franck (Arup), Alison Watson (Class of Your Own)

Unexpectedly the panel this year included, well, me. Perhaps even more surprising was that the topic was about quotas for women on the board. I was impressed to learn that some countries have been implementing a 20% policy to help increase diversity at the top. I think this is important, and so took the (unpopular, it turns out) view that engineering should do the same.

The against (and vote winning) argument was that engineers should be promoted on their merit; and that such positive discrimination would breed distrust and lack of respect. The majority of the floor felt that the reason for the significant imbalance in upper management was primarily due to the low number of women entering the profession in the first place, augmented by historically bad equality policies.

The for (a side I reluctantly picked from a more Swiss-neutral) focused on the effects of unconscious bias; noting that an injection of women (who are all likely to be capable in any case) into positions where they could influence change were more likely to alter the status quo and accelerate the process. After all, anyone with a touch of game theory knows that a system rarely increases in entropy if only those who win get to pick the rules. 

Alison Watson (Class of Your Own)

Luke Steedman, Bradley Lees, Luke Chantler, and Craig Vevers (St Ambrose Barlow RC High School)

Now to what has to be the youngest speakers ever at an IABSE conference; and more literally the future of design. Class of Your Own is an amazing initiative to get school children interested into the profession- and teach the teachers too. It starts (this year) with a fantastic premise; James Bond has got a BIM model of a London underground station he wants to change into a hotel- however he is surprisingly hot on sustainability and also insists that the result engages the local community.

The presentation was great; hearing how the students had taken “special agent saturdays” to develop their Revit model solution; gadgets, solar panels, wind turbines, fish tanks, dark and secretive corners and even a casio. Counting as vocational UCAS credits, the course exploits the affinity that younger generations have with software to provide an entry point into what can be a fairly opaque industry. Now looking for paid work experience; I wish them, and the initiative, all the best. 

Robin Sham (AECOM)

Sham is certainly the the speaker who has traveled the furthest (I’ve seen) to talk at a Future of Design; but I’m glad he did. I’ve never seen an engineer with so many record breaking projects under their belt! His presentation looked at some of these, including the ‘third generation’ of suspension bridge; where two separate decks are held by a central cable system. There’s a huge number of articles on this, all of which explain it so much better than I ever could.

Of course, you don’t get a career like this with constantly innovating; both design and construction methods. I was particularly impressed with the development of a ‘lean and mean’ travelling formwork to extend the cantilever lengths- I can’t imagine ever asking a contractor to use custom plant! Looking to the future of design, Sham sees eco-bridges; where fibers in the surfacing provide enough energy to power the bridge; as well as developments in approaches to reach even longer spans (such as crossing-cables!).

Xavier De Kestelier (Foster + Partners)

Following my first Future of Design, I managed to wing a trip to meet someone following a similar career path to me (that’s how good the networking is). After having a chat, I stood up to leave and swung my backpack on, cutting off a model astronaut behind me at the knees. Unable to flee the scene, and witnessed by a group of students touring the office- it goes down as one of the most embarrassing things I’ve done in a professional capacity. Guess what that model was of… – Ed.

Possibly only Foster’s could be commissioned to undertake something as beautifully esoteric as a project to build a lunar base. So how do you design for conditions where it cost you £2000/kg in transportation, the outside temperature ranges from +160 to -160 degrees celsius, there are high levels of radiation, and every now and again a meteorite comes and hits you. By using 3D printing, of course.

Delivered in flat packed modules; our settlers receive a 3D printer’mobile and inflatable membrane. Once pressurized the robots use the only natural resource; lunar rocks- to form blocks with a light, bone-like, microstructure. Like an igloo, the thick shell shields and insulates from the external environment, providing resistance to the gamma radiation and meteorite strikes; while an air gap for insulation. If you’re thinking about settling the moon any time soon; check out the video.

And there it is; the Future of Design North 2015. It was a fantastic event, and I would urge you to attend the next one, when it’s announced. For those of you who can’t wait, tickets for the ‘South’/London one are already on sale for September 2015. I’ll be there- and what other reason do you need?

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With a quote from Prince Phillip about how the world that surrounds us is the vision of architects and engineers, the IABSE Future of Design North started off as it meant to continue; celebrating and sharing the innovations of our profession. It was exciting to see the fantastic conference venture beyond the capital; and just as amazing to see that it was just as successful for it- with well over 100 attendees and the first speaker from outside Europe.

Today’s post is brought to you with a prefix of shame, however. You see, the IABSE Future of Design North 2015 happened over three months ago. Since then I’ve had my notebook of inscrutable writings from the event glaring at me reproachfully from my desk draw; while my turn-around for this post approaches Duke Nukem like heights. My only real excuse is that I’m an engineer (lit. someone who has half the spare time they think they do.) Better late than never, however, and hopefully this will act as a fond remembrance for those who went, now, just as much as a good summary for those who didn’t.

Francine Houben (Mecanoo)

Aptly fresh from the opening of a new office in Manchester, Houben talked about Mecanoo’s principles of design. Taking an interdisciplinary approach with their “symphony orchestra” of employees with diverse skill sets and even more diverse origins, the firm doesn’t believe that architecture is just an expression of art; it is something that should touch all the senses. Their philosophy is “People, Place and Purpose”. You might know everything about what constitutes a beautiful structure; but unless you’ve taken the time to understand the people and place that will form its context- all is lost.

Explaining the process, Houben talked us through the stages that led to the Birmingham Library. By walking through the city and talking to the people, she came to realize that it is an industrial town; where the river forms an incidental journal of art- giving her a story to form the architecture around. Learning how celebrated the archive was- she made sure that it wasn’t just relegated to the basement as so often happens. The result is a space that people enjoy, coping with the changing use of libraries over time; which is more than I can say for my local concrete block!

Brian Duguid (Mott MacDonald)

Another fitting topic- the Northern Hub; a massive upgrade to the rail network to significantly improve services to and around the north of England. For this talk Duguid focused on the Ordsall Chord; a bridge that provides a critical bypass across a busy branch. Requiring 300m of new structures, widening of old masonry arches and situated on an environmentally and historically sensitive site (passing over Stephenson’s skew bridge, for example); the project would be complicated enough (when else will you need to film a masonry arch to determine how it behaves under load?!) without the decision to innovate by using a Network Arch form for the Chord.

Focusing on the delivery of the project Duguid noted that this form, while incredibly efficient when complete, is less so in the temporary condition. This has added to the complexity; highlighting the notion that while simplicity may not deliver the best solution- it does allow changes to be more easily forecast, making the design more flexible. Duguid seemed to have a similar attitude to BIM; noting that its “unbearable certainty” meant that models were often misleading, especially in the early stages where the design was still developing, or interfaced with existing, imperfect, structures.

Perhaps the most interesting points, to me, were on the commercial aspects of the project. Delivered under an alliance model, the client, consultant and contractor all take ownership of the project- sharing the risk and the successes. Fantastic for complex, or ill-defined projects (like everything I seem to work on!), it forces collaboration; making the team focus on solutions, not problems. Noting that Duguid works as the sign-off for both the contractor and the client shows just how effective the model has been at removing the traditional adversarial attitudes that are common in our contracts.

Anna Liu & Mike Tonkin (Tonkin Liu)

It’s funny how easy it is to get set in your way. After nearly 10 years of training, when asked to draw a structural form I’m conditioned to pull out an I, a square/rectangle, T, or maybe an L. What’s amazing about Liu and Tonkin’s “story of failures” is that they were able to look beyond this and take inspiration from nature; shells and leaves; to form structures from incredibly thin, flat, steel sheets into immensely strong forms. It’s not often you see meters of span formed of millimeter thin steel!

Although their story was one of posturing, tendering and being (in the main) declined; they have been learning from these failures- acknowledging that these thin plate systems are only strong in the permanent condition and therefore need to be augmented for the temporary case to avoid prohibitive false works; working to realise their components from 2D elements to allow them to be formed without wastage; analysing the sections to remove all but the critically stressed parts. So in the not too distant future, I hope we’ll start to see some significant structures birthed from this remarkable form.

Peter Miller (Severfield)

It seems an IABSE tradition to bring along one person who actually does some real work (lit. a contractor), presumably so they can look on in fear as the speakers discuss increasingly complex and intricate designs for them to realise. Miller works at Severfield (née Watson), who are responsible for fabricating and erecting some of the most challenging projects in the UK, and his talk focused on some of the techniques they’re using to deliver projects in increasingly economic, program and space constrained sites.

Perhaps most impressive was his revelation that they are now sliding bridges over live rail lines. For those of you who haven’t worked with Network Rail, this is a massive achievement. Of course, the art is in assurance; significant work goes in beforehand, working with the permanent works designers to ensure the temporary conditions can be supported, pre-erection and test runs and a well-honed system of working. It is, however, a massive bit of progress- the ability to safely install new bridges across the line without closing it will do a lot to relieve the inconvenience and cost of possessions.

Neil Thomas (Atelier One)

It’s not every day you get a talk from the Royal Designer for Industry. Describing the role of the engineer as something between a magician, a school boy and a builder; Thomas took us through some of the exciting projects he’s worked on over the years before finishing on a stark reminder that climate change is a very real problem that, as an industry, we seem to be ignoring. Talking about the future of design he says he’s holding out hope for the coming innovations in self-assembly structures and programmable textiles.

Thomas has definitely strayed from the beaten path with his firm; primarily working to deliver the structural elements of concert stages. It’s not often you get to hear about the design challenges behind U2’s requirements for a 360 degree screen– “either you put a damper in now and wonder if you needed it, or leave it out and find out you did!”. When it comes to working on bespoke multidiscipline projects under the public eye (where there’s no second chances), Thomas notes that collaboration becomes essential; all teams working on the same model and constantly sharing their ideas, expertise and experiences to ensure the final product works on the night.

Richard Hornby (Arup)

I feel a bit like I’m being stalked by the new Forth bridge, whose progress I’ve accidentally followed closely; although thanks to Thomas I now know that it’s a bridge, and not a tunnel, because you can’t easily transport Whiskey though a tunnel! Hornby’s talk focused on the design; the challenge to produce a solution that combines elegance, efficiency and economy (or are they the same thing?) while not looking out of place standing alongside a river of bridges that were the state of the art for their time.

One thing I didn’t know about cable stayed bridges is the while two towers are common, three or more are not. As you increase the towers it is necessary to start relying on tower bending and deck stiffness. You could tie the tops of the towers to solve this problem; but the spans involved result in self-weight stretching that is prohibitive. Instead Hornby used a parametric approach to discover that overlapping the anchor lengths of each tower by approximately 33% results in an ideal balance between deck thickness and tower size. Now under construction, the bridge should be open in 2016.

That’s it for the first part, look out for the second half coming next week (or the week after; two weeks at the outside…)!

The post Future of Design North 2015: Part 1 appeared first on Being Brunel.

I’m sure you’ve all been at the edge of your seats waiting for the second part from the highlights of the IABSE 2014 Future of Design conference; and for that I can only apologise- some times life gets in the way. I expect it’s a good sign, however, that a day long conference results in enough highlights to span more than one article.

In the second half of the conference there was a series of competitive presentations by actual young designers; keen to share their papers about the innovative design, or structural research they have undertaken. There’s also a short discussion on a topic pertinent to the structural engineering profession. I’ve given it my best to try and capture the key points- but, like most short talks; there’s a wealth of technical detail that makes a summary difficult to achieve.

Mungo Stacy (Parsons Brinckerhoff)

Mungo compared the principles of civil engineering to the famous commandments of product design by Dieter Rams: it should be innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, designed to the last detail, sustainable and efficient. By accepting this, the future of design has us becoming leaders in design technology, building a sustainable future of efficient structures.

To me the more pertinent part was a discussion of engineers and our perceived lack of value within society. He argues that we cannot just demand to be valued, but must prove ourselves- remembering that once we were the pioneers. The built environment is the fruit of our design and we have an obligation to it; we cannot continue soliciting our skills to build whatever the clients demand, off-loading our responsibilities to politicians and ‘quick-win’ economics- we must return to acting as custodians for it, and there is where we will find respect again.

Young Designers

Jose Fernandes (Parsons Brinckerhoff), Prejay Patel (Mott MacDonald), David Knight (Flint & Neill), Elyes Aidi (Parsons Brinckerhoff), Katerina Vatti (Tony Hogg Design), Despina Tsertikidou (WSP)

This segment of the event celebrated some achievements of younger designers; who all presented papers as part of a larger competition. Jose started by introducing us to a tool he has created as part of his research into bridge dynamics. Intriguingly it allows engineers to get a quick indication of the effects of dynamic loading on simple bridges using nothing more than Excel! Prejay’s talk took us in an unexpected direction, where he discussed the finite element analysis of the pelvis- and how the use of similar ‘meso-scale‘ modelling could help engineers more efficiently assess complex structures.

David gave a talk on a project he had worked on; the Greenwich Reach Swing Bridge. What made this structure noteworthy was the use of a flat plate diagonal truss thru-section, which increased the buckling capacity by 50%. Elyes then shocked us all by bringing in a bit of the Old Wye Bridge– presumably to prove how urgently it needed repairs. More interesting than the technical side of the works, however, was its change management: which involved linking in a live spreadsheet log of defects into the analysis tools.

Katrina’s presentation focused on a field of engineering I’m almost completely ignorant of: fabric membrane structures. What it really highlighted, however, was the effects of ‘architecture-led-engineering’: Where the resulting structure was completely irrational; requiring each and every double layered panel to be individually analysed and designed. Finally Despina talked us though her involvement with the massive London Bridge Station upgrade project; and the difficulties of managing substantial programme pressures, working with partial information and dealing with the outfall of assumptions, which comes with working on our historic infrastructure!

Discussion Panel

Colin Wilson (GLA), Mark O’Connor (WSP), Clive Atkinson (Mott MacDonald), Karen Cook (PLP Architecture)

Quipping that “London got exciting in the 2000’s”; the view of the panel discussing “Designing the London Skyline” was clearly that the rise of tall-buildings is a good thing. Perhaps more surprising was the discovery that our audience bucked the stereotype of the ‘ordered’ engineer and voted nearly unanimously in favour of the fluid, dynamic and frankly disorganised nature of our city arrangement (that so aptly reflects our historic legal approach to planning) against the more precise ‘zoning‘ found in other cities.

Karen did, however, express a bit of frustration at how slow our system can be; noting that a partial pre-approval approach would be needed to help supply meet demand. The view of the panel was that London is beginning to mature, and the pubescent need for each of our tall buildings to be special (Walkie Talkie, anyone?) is ebbing. City planners are also getting better at negotiating; ensuring that every high-rise either provides affordable accommodation, or contributes to the city as a whole through parks and public infrastructure, etc.

Much of the discussion focused on the life of the buildings (25-50 years for most commercial offices- arguably a waste) and the exclusivity of them; spending our lives designing flats we could never afford. Interestingly Mark noted that this current tendency to mega-tall (40-75 storey) premium high-rises is likely to be a bit of a blip, and that the medium storey towers of the 60s are likely to have a second coming as the city attempts to house its workers.

Michel Virlogeux (Independent)

After last year’s performance by Mike Schlaich, and now Michel’s truly entertaining talk; I’m forced to conclude that engineers on the continent enjoy the profession more than we do! Like other engineering celebrities; I’m never going to do this man justice in a few paragraphs, and I’d really recommend trying to find a talk by him to truly appreciate the experience!

Michel’s talk focused on his experience doing something I’ve said you should never do; making a suspension bridge to carry rail. With the desire to create the slender decks that you would expect from the farther of the Milau Viaduct; Michel won the competition to the new Bosporous Bridge by throwing away the double-decker configuration typically used to provide adequate stiffness, and instead created a cable-stayed/suspension hybrid.

Looking at the 1400m span, Michel quickly identified that the maximum deflections from the heavy combined rail/road loading occurred at the quarter points, and worked to augment the suspension bridge with cable stayed lengths extending out from the pylons; providing enough stiffness while maintaining a razor-thin deck. This system allowed him to find perfect balance in the system under permanent loads; supporting the rest (in his own words) is like finding the cost of VAT!

Mark Whitby (DMagW)

One of the nice things about the Future of Design event are the talks from seasoned engineers who still think that working with structures is fun. Since selling whitbybird back in 2007, Mark, our presidential Olympian (if Wikipedia is to be believed) has set out to take back ownership of our structures, and have fun doing so.

Through a tour-de-force of his more recent projects, Mark has seemingly enjoyed playing with structural forms; although he does acknowledge that architects are needed for the aesthetics (who else knows how to do hand-railing?!) Joking that coming up for new bridge designs is easy, a core theme has been how with working out the detail of every new bridge comes another idea to be investigated and attempted for the next design.

Kirsten Henson (KLH Sustainability)

For Kirsten, the main challenge isn’t the engineering behind making things sustainable; but getting everyone from the clients down to the contractors to buy into the idea. There’s a misnomer that ‘sustainability’ is something you add to the project; an unfortunate set of hoops that you have to jump through, which only makes everything more expensive. Some ways of thinking, however, aren’t helping; and she lamented the difficulties she had using a foam mix for inspection chambers because, despite being around from the 1960’s, it was “unproven”.

The art, according to Kirsten, is learning to use the right language. Clients won’t care that BRE such-and-such states that this should be done, or know a CEEQUAL award if it fell out of a tree onto them; but they will know how having a sustainable building fits in with their core business strategy. Using the new BskyB campus as an example, she explains how KLH engaged with the Corporate Sustainability Team to ensure the sustainability of this major new development was a client-led achievement.

Find the cost saving (think land remediation) and health and safety benefits sustainable technologies can bring, and getting buy-in from a contractor is easy. Designers, she said, have a responsibility to not just hide behind the standards, but to really consider the opportunities around them- to ensure lazy specifications to hinder later sustainability options. She finished by cajoling the room to make sure they tell the public just how good we are- silently working small miracles will get us nowhere!

The next IABSE Future of Design event will be in Manchester on the 27th of March. I’ll be aiming to go (company permitting), and if you can, I’d really recommend you do too- if only for the enviable opportunity to meet myself…

The post The Future of Design 2014: Part 2 appeared first on Being Brunel.

Every year I go to the IABSE Future of Design conference (sample size: 2 years). It has a good selection of speakers, but more than that- it has a good selection of attendees. It’s nice to meet people the same level as me in different firms, who are at least interested in engineering enough to take a day off work to hear about it.

For those of you who know nothing of the IABSE Future of Design events, they’re day long conferences aimed primarily at young designers; although the speakers are typically experienced members of the industry. Unlike many conferences, however, the aim of most talks is simply to celebrate structural design; rather than honing in on a specific technicality- or even field!

As is my wont, this, and the next, post will skim over some of the highlights of the day- for those of you who didn’t attend, and those of you who turned up but were distracted by the pastries.

Josef Hargrave (Arup)

It seems apt that a day on the future of design should begin with someone whose whole career is based on the development of techniques and tools to help target markets for the future. Quipping that ‘change is constant’, and only those that adapt will thrive and survive; Josef outlined his view of the future. At the end of his talk, however, Josef acknowledged that our industry is slow to change because of the relatively long life of our products, and the high risks involved- and he was unsure of what we could do to keep up with the pace of technological and scientific development.

With the widespread accessibility of social media, feedback is immediate and technology allows people to react instantly. According to Josef this will lead to more user driven and democratic design; tooling the communities affected to design their own environment. Engineering will begin to focus more on resilience and adaptation as climate change increases the frequency of extreme events; and similarly resource pressure will lead to a focus on a built environment that produces as much as it consumes. That is Josef’s considered opinion; and to be honest- it’s not hard to imagine it coming to pass…

Francis Archer & Phillip Hall-Patch

Arup & Heatherwick Studio

Not surprisingly Arup’s Garden Bridge was one of the more controversial talks of the event. Crossing the Thames at Embankment, the 300m long, two-span balanced cantilever bridge has been mathematically designed to appear as if it sprouts, like the branches on a tree, from its two piers. The biggest challenge seemed to surround creating a “maintenance free” design life of 120 years for the structure (a phrase I was once told to severely distrust); requiring a monolithic shell of copper-rolled steel. Designed to ‘delight’, I’ll be doing a follow up fairly soon, trying to figure out why this bridge is so divisive.

Julia Barfield (Marks Barfield)

Architect of the London Eye and the Kew Garden tree-top walkway; Julia’s talk was surprisingly modest- although she won me over fairly quickly after stating that “weathering steel is beautiful”. Talking about the Kew Garden tree-top walkway, she explained the focus on keeping the structure a kit of parts; repetitive, slender and adaptable (something that would later help after a last minute route change); and the struggle of getting close enough to a tree without killing it.

Currently she is seeing a project her firm had initiated, the Brighton i360, enter construction. Following the London Eye, she says, every city now seems to want a tourist wheel- but few can really sustain them. The solution for Brighton is a slender needle/capsule vertical lift tower; providing unrivalled views of Brighton, the Channel (and the Isle of Wight, for some reason). Most interesting to me is the construction sequence, which can only be described as a vertical launch- each piece being slotted in at ground level, and then lifted to form a space for the next!

John Cutlack (Flint & Neill)

John started his talk with a reminder that “Structural Engineering is Fun!” He then proceeded to prove it, by taking example of structures he’d been involved with during his career. From floating cars to Venturi chamber shaped bridges, giant model American Footballers [ed. well, I think it was, but Google is showing a blank] that crouched in the wind and climbing walls for land rovers- each example seemed more tantalisingly outlandish than the next.

A common theme across all of the structures he had been involved with was that it was the structure that formed the architecture. Lamenting the separation of architects and engineers that occurred with the industrial revolution, John made a plea for younger engineers to get involved with conceptual design- where there is free reign to think and experiment; too often they get bogged down with detail and then find themselves in management- ultimately missing the chance to have some fun with their skills.

Keith Brownlie (BEaM)

Bridge design, fashion, and innovation formed the crux of Keith’s talk. Starting with the assertion that fashion is circular, technology is linear and construction is stationary (constrained); he asked why don’t bridges all look the same? His answer was context- we have bridges that create context (such as the proposed Garden Bridge) and bridges that engage with the local context (like the Kew Garden walkway). Talking of where the edge-fashion is today for bridges, he identifies ‘logo potential’, view from space (given Google Maps) and turning soffits into areas in their own rights as sources of inspiration.

Ralph Parker & Tim Lucas

Price & Myers

This talk focused on the conceptual birth, engineering development and eventual construction of a sculpture at Heathrow airport. The concept was to build a continuous volume representing the animation of a plane doing an inversion stunt. Tim’s work focused on realising this as a structural system; employing the increasingly necessary engineering skill of big-data management to collate thousands of points down to a real volume; which could then be rationalised into a physical object.

To me, it was the role of the unnamed contractor that proved most interesting. It had turned out that they had cunningly required drawings be provided for all parts. This led the guys to discovered that they had designed something that needed 35’000 drawings to build. That (seemingly alone) is what spurred them to truly address the buildability; reducing the construction complexity into support cassettes, which could be assembled like jigsaws from pieces that were automatically cut using a link between the software and the laser machine- although it still resulted in sections that took three hours to lift…

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