CE

Civil Engineering-A Brief History o f the Profession: The Perspective of The Institution of Civil Engineers

Michael Chrimes and Amar Bhogal 2

Synopsis

This paper describes the development of the profession that became known as 'civil engineering, its impact on the development of civilisation through several millennia, with particular regard to the origins and role of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

The Institution of Civil Engineers, founded in a London Coffee House in 1818, was the world's first professional engineering body. A detailed account of its subsequent history is available in past 1CE Secretary Rear Admiral J Garth Watson's authoritative history The Civils.

This paper, in two parts, will concern itself with a general view of the development of the profession in the United Kingdom, and the developing role of the Institution.

A: Civil engineering - its origins in the British Isles (Mike Chrimes)

Civil engineering was first defined by Thomas Tredgold for the Institution's Royal Charter of 1828. For Tredgold 'civil engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man . . . ' Tredgold was writing at a time when the beneficial use of one source of power - steam - was what appeared to be driving civilisation forward, but Tredgold recognised there was much more to civil engineering than steam engines

Civil engineering had been practised for long before Tredgold or the founding of the ICE. Engineers today synthesise scientific understanding with technological advances to create the environment we live in. Such a process is evident in all but the most primitive societies. While 'scientific' engineering is generally regarded as a nineteenth century development, the scale of the creative activity of engineers has

2 Mr Amar Bhogal BSc CEng FICE (Deputy Chief Executive & Secretary), Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, Westminster, London SWIP 3AA; tel +44 (0)20 7665 2202; fax +44 (0)20 7665 2268 email: [email protected]

73

International Engineering History and Heritage

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74 INTERNATIONAL ENGINEERING HISTORY AND HERITAGE

long called on another skill of the civil engineer- management. The management of human and material resources require a degree of social organisation or a 'civilisation'. Surviving monuments indicate that the skills of the proto-civil engineer have been employed for millennia.

Figure AI: Thomas Tredgold

In the British Isles one has Silbury Hill, Stonehenge and New Grange, monuments of international significance. The Pyramids of the ancient Egyptians are perhaps the most visible of monuments to early engineering skills. Many early civilisations relied on irrigation and drainage systems to tap the natural resources of great rivers. Although much of the physical evidence of these achievements has been lost, where this remains, as in Inca territory it can serve as a reminder that some 'engineers' of the past could provide a more sustainable resource than people today.

Many surviving monuments are religious, and it was their scale as much as anything which required the skills of a 'civil engineer' to achieve them. Others were of a military nature and great defensive works such as the Great Wall of China are a reminder of the ancient origins of military engineering. What distinguished civil engineering was not its ingenuity or scale of achievement but its contribution to the development of society and its quality of life, The lines between the achievements of the two disciplines have frequently been blurred. One cannot separate the Roman road network from Imperial conquest, but the scale and extent of the Roman achievement appears an unqualified advance on what preceded and followed in much of northern Europe. Roman engineers brought water to their towns on a scale not seen in Britain for another 1,000 years.


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INTERNATIONAL ENGINEERING HISTORY AND HERITAGE 75

Figure A2: Stonehenge

The Romans have also left a human face to engineering. Written records enable us to attribute names to surviving achievements like 'Hadrian's Wall'. Imperial Rome provided not just a physical but also an administrative infrastructure in which the rote of an engineer or architect could be identified. Such a state dependent profession was to recur as a feature of European civil engineering in early modem times.

Civil engineering in mediaeval Europe

The collapse of Rome did not end engineering achievement in Europe. In the East Byzantine 'engineers' such as Anthemius and lsidorus created masterpieces like the dome of Hagia-Sophia. Successor states in western Europe employed military engineers to consolidate their conquests with fortifications and expand with siege engines. Civil engineering skills were required to design and build bridges, harness the power of wind and water for miIls, protect land from flooding and irrigate it in times of drought. Such skills might be honed in a local guild-based apprenticeship system of carpenter, blacksmith and millwright, but the great structural engineering monuments of mediaeval Europe - the cathedrals and monasteries - were sustained by master masons and the patronage of the church. Religious orders were involved in all manner of engineering work, calling on lay craftsmen where necessary.


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Figure A3: Flying buttresses at St Denis, Paris, c. 1240AD

The mediaeval master mason can be regarded as an embryonic professional, with his lodge as a local 'institution'. He had recognisable transferable skills and qualifications which enabled him to command respect among his contemporaries and thus be entrusted with the resources to build great works. From the late mediaeval period the engineers from the Low Countries, an economically advanced region at the mercy of the sea, were employed all around Europe in land drainage and sea defence works. Both here and in northern Italy great advances were made on navigation works and particularly the engineering of locks. Without the benefit of the Internet knowledge of such skills and achievements spread rapidly. Military engineers were not the only mercenaries, and in Tudor and Stuart Britain foreign 'civil' engineers were often employed.

Civil engineering - the European context c.1500-1800

The Renaissance period was characterised by a number of sophisticated and prosperous urban societies, and the early development of overseas trading empires. The associated infrastructure and technology was supplied by a growing number of engineers active in the civil and military sphere. The development of the engineering profession in France is probably best known. A state planned infrastructure was masterminded by successive ministers under the Bourbons. Artillery schools were established in Metz and Strasburg in 1689 to educate a Corps of Military Engineers established in 1676. The system was reorganised in 1720, and at a new school, La Frre, Belidor produced the standard civil engineering textbook of the eighteenth


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century Architecture Hydraulique, used by Smeaton, Rennie and Telford. The bridge engineer Perronet established a civil engineering school in Paris in 1747. How much practical engineering knowledge was taught is debatable (Piton) before the course was rationalised after the French Revolution and the establishment of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Hautes-Ecoles system. In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century these organisational developments were accompanied by important contributions to methods of engineering analysis by Coulomb, Navier and others.

Elsewhere the Portuguese and Spanish empires feature triumphs of civil engineering. Whilst in Europe the Habsburgs' power was consolidated by the employment of some of the most gifted military engineers of the age. From much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century they were embroiled in conflict in Italy and the Low Countries where trade and economic wealth had stimulated pursuit of scientific knowledge and financed important engineering works, which were gradually diffused across Europe.

Figure A4: Improvements to the Tiber by the Dutch engineer Cornelius Meyer, c.1680

Engineering expertise of mining in central Europe is symbolised by Agricola's great


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sixteenth century text and it was in the Habsburg Empire of central Europe rather than France that the first civil engineering course, in Prague, was established in 1717. The French 'model' of engineering schools and a Corps of State Engineers was typical in continental Europe around 1800. Engineering schools, or technical universities were established in Freiburg (Bergakademie, 1765), Berlin (Bauakademie, 1799), Karlsruhe (1825), Delft (1843), St Petersburg (1809) and Madrid (1802); were very much on the French polytechnic model. Distinguished state engineers of the time include Carl Wiebeking who pioneered the use of laminated timber arch bridges, c. 1810. This state/university led profession has often been contrasted with the learned society/Institution focus of the civil engineering profession in Britain. There were, however, perhaps more similarities than immediately evident.

The development of the civil engineering profession in the British Isles 1500- 1800

There can be little doubt that Tudor England was economically backward compared to cosmopolitan areas like northern Italy. For much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Britain relied on foreign engineers for their expertise in tackling projects such as the drainage of the fens where Cornelius Vermuyden and John Liens took the lead. Even these projects, however, depended on native 'engineers' to superintend construction. Elsewhere, in the Tudor period well-known figures such as Sir Francis Drake became involved in civil engineering works - in his case Plymouth's Water Supply.

Figure A5: Drake's Leat, at Plymouth


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Such 'gentlemen engineers' were typical of the time, sponsoring civil engineering works where they had a vested interest. The Dover harbour works carried out in the Tudor period are illustrative of the nature of the then community of engineers. Early work was directed by a cleric, reflecting the prestige and leaning of the church, semi- professional military engineers provided advice, as did 'mathematical practitioners' like Thomas Digges - individuals with scientific training - often self-taught - who sort to apply it in a practical manner. One of the first professional 'civil' engineers was also involved, and directed work for a while: John Trew. He was a pioneer of canal locks, constructed on the river Lea and engineer of the Exeter Canal. Unfortunately, his origins and fate are shrouded in mystery.

In the seventeenth century a number of rivers were improved by gentlemen engineers using the skills of local craftsmen. These and the major fen drainage schemes, were privately financed, but the state was also active, for instance in the development of dockyard facilities. The capital involved in these dock schemes attracted the attentions of the first great civil engineering contractor Sir Thomas Fitch.

While it had long been normal to refer to military practitioners as 'engineers', in the seventeenth century there were growing instances of civil engineers being so described with an example being Richard Hurd who improved the Exeter Canal. This can be seen as recognition by clients that the professional skills of 'civil engineers' were worth seeking out. One cannot, however, speak of a profession, which was still made of disparate individual practitioners - gentlemen engineers like William Sandys who made the Avon navigable, mathematical practitioners like Jonas Moore who worked on the Fens and mercurial figures like Andrew Yarranton who was involved in mineral exploitation and river improvements. In the seventeenth century the number of projects undertaken were insufficient to attract many full-time professionals.

One area of growth was in the mining sector where 'coal viewers' were developing skills in shaft sinking and pumping machinery, which could be used for the water supply of towns and landscape gardens as well as to work mines. At the start of the eighteenth century Thomas Newcomen transformed the steam engine from a plaything of the Royal Society to a serious technological breakthrough which was to help give Britain an industrial lead over its European rivals for nearly two centuries. The needs of trade and agriculture created a demand for engineers to supply a transport infrastructure and reclaim land.

From the start of the eighteenth century it becomes easier to identify the strands of the engineering profession in Britain. The military engineer, as in France, got official recognition with the organisation of a Corps of Royal Engineers in 1716. Perhaps the military's most impressive achievement in the eighteenth century was the development of the road network in Scotland. The State in the form of the Irish Parliament was also very active in public works in the eighteenth century.


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Figure A6: John Reynolds' sluice near Chester, c. 1741

In the early eighteenth century Captain John Perry returned from service in the dockyards of Peter the Great, and solved the problem of a breach in the banks of the Thames at Dagenham, by the use of interlocking sheet pile walls to provide an effective seal beneath sluices. Among the craftsmen he employed a carpenter, John Reynolds, who honed these skills and made a career as a 'water carpenter' or civil engineer, making good, around 1740, a sluice which had blown up on the River Dee near Chester.

Reynolds' career as a craftsman turned engineer is fairly typical of a large proportion of eighteenth century civil engineers in Britain. Perhaps the most famous example is James Brindley, a millwright who became well known among the wealthy industrialists of the Potteries and North west as a man of genius in all engineering matters. Despite his lack of previous experience of canal engineering in 10 years in the 1760s he developed a network of canals criss-crossing the industrial heartland of Britain, with overall responsibility for projects totalling a million pounds in value. He had no professional engineering body he could turn to for advice, no pool of qualified engineers to draw on. Instead he relied on trustworthy friends and relations, trained surveyors, and skilled masons and carpenters, some of whom followed him into civil engineering and were able to manage, in their turn, the demands of the canal mania of the 1790s. Brindley's work, incomplete at his death, was a landmark in the development of civil engineering, but his 'training' was not the only 'model' being followed at the time.


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In the 1740s John Grundy (junior) began to practice as a civil engineer, and at Grimsthorpe designed, for an ornamental lake, the first earth dam with a puddle clay core. Grundy's father was a teacher of mathematics to the gentry of the Fens, and was consulted by them about various engineering matters. He evidently felt it was worthwhile training his son as a civil engineer, and Grundy (junior) appears to be the first professionally trained British civil engineer. Grundy's report books survive, as do records of his library. From this it is clear that Grundy was widely read in the scientific literature of the time, and meticulous in his fieldwork.

This meticulous approach is also associated with the work of John Smeaton, the first engineer to describe himself as a 'civil engineer', in the 1760s. Smeaton is rightly regarded as the founder of the civil engineering profession in Britain. His symbolic appropriation of the title 'civil engineer', one assumes to distinguish himself from military practitioners, is really the icing on the cake in this regard. Smeaton lacked the benefit of a sympathetic father to bring him on in the profession. His own father was a lawyer from Leeds and intended John to follow him. Smeaton had other interests, the world of science and practical mechanics. He trained himself as an instrument maker, became known in the London scientific community who were impressed with his ingenuity and in his first great work, the Eddystone lighthouse revealed himself an engineering genius..

Figure A7: John Smeaton - plan for carrying on the mechanical part of the works of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde


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On the Forth and Clyde Canal project he created a management structure comprising a resident engineer with overall responsibility for managing construction for the client, and assistant engineers supervising work in the field, certifying the work of contractors and authorising payment - a management model which was the dominant form in Britain for more than 200 year. Perhaps this signalled the birth of the modern profession.

Development of the Professional Institution (Amar Bhogal)

If Smeaton was the dominant professional of the second half of the eighteenth century, he was not alone. The pace of civil engineering work quickened and the legislative demands associated with it. Although most public works were privately financed, they required Parliamentary sanction. Success was not guaranteed and informed expert evidence became a prerequisite of success. During the Parliamentary session Smeaton and his colleagues were obliged to spend time in London on Parliamentary business. In their spare time it was typical for them to meet together and discuss matters of professional interest; in 1771 this process was formalised in the (Smeatonian) Society of Civil Engineers - a body which exists to this day as a dining society.

Undoubtedly a milestone in the development of the profession, yet, the Society never developed into a professional body. It was dogged by an element of professional jealousy and in the early nineteenth century became increasingly exclusive. Its chief achievement was to organise the publication of Smeaton's reports which consolidated Smeaton's reputation. Robert Stephenson acknowledged his debt to Smeaton through the information he gleaned from this source.

Smeaton had a number of pupils, the first being William Jessop. By the 1790s he had become the dominant engineer in the country. He came into contact with Thomas Telford, county surveyor of Shropshire - a journeyman mason with architectural aspirations - who was given a role in the management of the construction of the local Ellesmere Canal for which Jessop was the consulting engineer. The fruits of this collaboration were seen in the Pontcysyllte aqueduct and later the Caledonian Canal, and Telford emerged as the leading civil engineer of his generation.

Telford's chief rival for this title was John Rennie, like Telford a Scot, but from a wealthier background. He was trained as a millwright and first arrived in London as a designer of machinery to work with Boulton and Watt steam engines. Machine building remained an important part of his business - Smeaton had also designed mills and steam engines - but Rennie was widely read and developed an extensive civil engineering practice, responsible for a number of canals, harbour, great dockyard improvements and important bridges across the Thames. He died in 1821 and left the field open for Telford to lead the profession.


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By 1800 one can speak of a civil engineering profession. Emphasis has so far been focused on the designers, but the growth and continuity of work had encouraged the growth of contractors from family concerns of masons and carpenters to large scale enterprises, capable of carrying out contracts of several hundred thousand pounds in value. One of the earliest such firms was that of the Pinkertons who seems to have first developed as drainage cutters in the fens, working for Grundy among others in the 1760s, and by the 1790s they were tendering for the entire length of Jessop's Basingstoke Canal. In the 1790s two other contractors began working: Hugh Mclntosh and (Sir) Edmund Banks, by the 1820s they had turnovers of several hundred thousand pounds a year, Mclntosh's son David had his portrait painted by Landseer and attended Glasgow University and Banks was knighted for his role on London Bridge. Contractors had arrived.

Figure BI: Edward Banks

Given the achievements of the civil engineering profession it is perhaps surprising that the Institution was not founded until 1818. The reasons for this lie with the motives of the original founders, a group of eight young engineers, mostly working in


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the mechanical engineering workshops of south London. Their reputations would not give them access to the Smeatonian Society, and yet they wanted to learn more about the profession. The concept of self help was very strong at the time and was typified by the Mechanics Institute movement of the 1820s.

There can be no doubt it was difficult to be trained as a civil engineer. Even in 1800 only a small proportion of civil engineers had been trained for the profession - Jessop was a notable exception (table 1). At the Institution's first meeting Palmer set out the Institution's objectives; most were learned society objectives.

�9 - a society be formed, consisting of persons studying the profession of a civil engineer;

�9 the junior members age should be 20-35; �9 the society shall meet once a week for the purpose of mutual instruction in that

knowledge requisite for the profession; �9 guidelines for debate would be entered in a book by the Secretary for future

discussion, books and invention would be reviewed; �9 people who do not study the profession as a means of subsistence but devote

their leisure to such pursuits, may be admitted as honorary members; �9 members should be proposed by professional engineers and seconded by two

more, all testifying to the reasons for their proposal; �9 members could be ejected if they were unqualified or careless about the interests

of the Institution ...

There are two chief points to note:

l ,

2.

The prime leamed society function of free discussion on engineering subjects, for the mutual benefit of members. The restriction of membership to members of the profession.

These resolutions have generally guided the Institution's activities since that time. What distinguished the Institution of Civil Engineers from the mechanics institutes of the time was its restriction of full membership to civil engineers. One issue which was to arise from this was how one could so define a civil engineer, and in particular were to be regarded as fully qualified. In 1818 this issue was future; it was sufficient for applicants to be proposed and seconded. All manner of individuals joined: mechanical engineers, millwrights, ironmasters, architects. With a pupillage system in its infancy it would have been difficult to insist on any formal qualifications. Although engineering was being taught to the military, specialist technical courses were not generally available at universities. There were very few textbooks available either.

The embryo institution grew only slowly. Its age limitation worked against it as there was no body with prestige to attract attention. Young engineers, then as now, lacked


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the financial resources to lease a building or publish transactions. There was a rapid change of heart and in 1820 Palmer asked his then employer Thomas Telford if he would take the office of President. Telford graciously accepted, made available his library of books, and through his influence and professional friendship built up, in the 1820s, an organisation with membership all over the British Isles. Telford was an international figure in the engineering world, and was able to introduce leading foreign engineers to the Institution, as well as British engineers working abroad on schemes on which he was consulted.

Figure B2: Royal Charter of 1828

It was recognised that the Institution should regularise its status, and with Telford's support in 1828 the Institution received its first Royal Charter, for which Tredgold wrote his classic definition. Throughout the nineteenth century this Charter gave the Institution great status as the leader of the entire engineering profession, even after specialisms had developed their own institutions.

Telford's death in 1834 led to the search for a successor and for the next ten years the Institution was led by James Walker, another Scot, a university graduate with a practice largely in dock and harbour engineering. This again meant he had the frequent ear of government.


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Telford left the Institution sufficient wealth to enable it, with the support of Walker and other leading members, to lease its first permanent home in Westminster, close to Parliament where its members were called on to give evidence. A permanent home meant proper lecture facilities and library, and accommodation for a full-time Secretary giving full-time attention to its business, of which the publication of its Proceedings was a top priority. Attention was also paid to qualifications for membership. Although no formal educational qualification could be insisted upon, it became necessary from 1839 for all new members to have served a pupillage with a Member, or to have carried out substantial civil engineering works in their own right.

Figure B3: Home of ICE 1839-1910, 25 Great George Street, c. 1870

One can thus say, that when Walker resigned from office in 1845 he did so leaving a professional engineering body in a form that was to be the model for all such bodies around the world to this day.

Walker resigned as he took offence when a 'stalking horse' candidate stood against him as President. The profession had moved on and no longer need rely on the patronage of a single grand engineer to prosper. Henceforth it was to be more of an honour to serve.


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A great change that had taken place in civil engineering - the railway revolution- which brought a new generation of engineers to the fore - Stephenson, Locke and Brunel - carrying out work on an unprecedented scale, and, most notably in Locke's case in virtual partnership with the contractor Thomas Brassey, all over the world.

At home the railway age presented issues of public safety in which the Institution had to get involved. While it defended its members' rights to design structures untrammelled by government codes, protesting strongly on behalf of John Fowler when the (military) inspecting engineer refused to allow the opening of a line on which he had designed a tubular box girder bridge, members also participated fully in inquiries into disasters such as the Tay Bridge failure. In short the Institution formed part of the Victorian establishment. For instance the contribution of senior members to the Great Exhibition of 1851 was immense, none greater than that of the President, Sir William Cubitt, as Chairman of the Building Committee.

When civil engineers took the public stage as creators of the railway system they were leading society into new territory - almost literally so in parts of the globe. From the middle of the nineteenth century they were also responding to the political demands of an industrial society, most obviously confronting the water borne diseases ravaging the new metropolises. A new generation of engineers came to the fore - James Simpson who adapted slow sand filtration for the Chelsea Waterworks Company as early as the 1820s, Joseph Bazalgette who masterminded the sewerage system of London, John Bateman and Thomas Hawksley who successfully supplied most British towns with aqueducts of 'sweet' water. When goverrmaent considered these issues in successive Commissions it was the civil engineers who provided the most credible witnesses; Robert Rawlinson, for example was appointed to the Sanitary Commission investigating the conditions of troops in the Crimean War. It is instructive that both Rawlinson, who was effectively the first engineer to the Department of Health, and Bazalgette, responsible for London's main drainage, had been trained as civil engineers on the railways.., an indication of the transferability of the skills of the time. Simpson had a mechanical engineering business specialising in the supplying the water industry; his father had been trained as a millwright. Variety is the spice of life.


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Figure B4: Solani Aqueduct, Ganges Canal. Engineer Sir Proby Cautley, c. 1860

The Institution had had an international membership from the 1820s. From the 1840s, as the pace of railway work at home slackened members turned overseas for work, in the colonies and elsewhere. These trends exposed the engineering education of members to increasing scrutiny. For anybody interacting with the engineers in continental Europe it was evident their formal technical education was much in advance of Britain. From the middle of the nineteenth century the British technological lead was being eroded and engineering education was identified as a potential cause. In response, under the Presidency of John Fowler in the 1860s a report was compiled on engineering education, which revealed how few British engineering schools there were, and by contrast how many there were on the continent. No action was taken. The British government, through its agencies in India, became concerned about the qualifications of engineers it had appointed to official ports on the sub-continent. For the Institution it was a simple issue - a Member of ICE was self evidently qualified. Unfortunately, the existing application forms, while giving some indication of experience revealed little of such basic skills as literacy and numeracy. While the Institution objected the India Office acted, and set up its own engineering school at Cooper's Hill to help address the problem. The Institution were slow to respond, but in 1887 it decided that new students would, from 1889, have to demonstrate knowledge of a general education. The absence of a state educational system of examinations of higher level led to the Institution setting its own examinations. 'Student' members responded by establishing, in a movement evocative of Palmer's original Institution, local associations or study groups to


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prepare for these examinations. Taking its responsibilities in this regard increasingly seriously the Institution decided to introduce 'professional' examinations from 1897, from which exemption could be sort by engineering degrees. From 1914 the concept of 'training under agreement' rather than an unmoderated pupillage was introduced and in 1919 an oral examination or professional interview was introduced as a means of assessing a candidate's 'professional' knowledge. Over a period of 30 years the Institution had moved from a position of complacency to one where it was monitoring its membership's credentials to a very high standard; its insistence on a blend of academic achievement and professional experience has continued to make full membership of the ICE a 'gold standard' to this day.

The Institution's early examinations were multi-disciplinary, reflecting its origins as a body covering all non-military branches of engineering. In the nineteenth century other bodies had been set up, often with the support of leading ICE members in other specialisms such as Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture. By the early twentieth century some of these bodies, notably the Mechanicals and Electricals, had more members than ICE, which, however, was very much the representative body of senior members of all branches of the profession. For the government this presented a problem as it could scarcely ignore these other professional bodies. Much effort was spent in seeking a working relationship to deal with this reality, and also with other branches of the construction industry with which ICE became increasingly associated. Today the Institution also acts as an umbrella for a whole range of multi-disciplinary societies such as the British Geotechnical Association, the British Nuclear Energy Society and the British Hydrological Society, hosting a programme of events to serve a whole community of interests.

The government at the start of the twentieth century were persuaded to establish the National Physical Laboratory. Much of its early work was concerned with wind loads. The Institution were influential in the development of the research focus of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research after the First World War, particularly the work of the Building Research Station. ICE pressure led to the establishment of the Hydraulics Research Station as a laboratory capable of modelling complex hydraulic phenomena.

This proactive role in British society has been reflected in a succession of achievements which history has not adequately recorded: the present British Standards Institution was a committee run by ICE as its Engineering Standards Committee from 1901, attracting a government subsidy.

The Institution's own research committee led a long term research programme into corrosion in sea water, and in the 1960s this committee's work inspired the foundation of CIRIA (originally CERA) as a multi-disciplinary facilitation of construction research. The committee continues to identify research priorities and provide start-up funding.


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1 s t M Er r | NS .

PRIYAT8 ANti CONFIDRNTIAf_

T h e I n s t i t u t i o n of G i v i l Engineers '

C O M M I T T E E O N S T A N D A R D S E C T I O N . ~

MINUTES OF MEETING OF T H E C O M M I T T E E

oN

S T A N D A R D S E C T I O N S lt~t.D AT T:~Z

I N S T I T U T I O N O F C I V I L E N G I N E E R S ,

On Fe6rua~ IStk, tgO[, at 3-3Op, m.

The Committee appointed by the Council Otl the ~2nd January,

" To consider t/w advisability of slandardising eke varlav~ kinds of iron and steel sectt~t; ; and, i f found ndw~able, t k ~ to ean~de, and report as to the steps wkic/t should b* taken to carry si~k slandardisation into praclice,"

met on the 18th February, at 3.30 p.m.

There were present Mr. Mansergh, President, Sir John Wolfe Bany, Sir Douglas Fox, Mr. J. A. McDonald, and Professor W. C, Onwin.

The Council Minute appointing the Committee having been

Figure B5: Minutes of Meeting of the ICE Committee on Standards Sections, 18 February 1901

The Institution today continues to follow the basic objectives set out by Henry Robinson Palmer nearly 200 years ago. Today these are identified as:

�9 A centre for learning: developing members skills �9 A qualifying body: setting the standards �9 A public voice for the profession: promoting the profession �9 A facilitation for best practice: improving the industry

Conclusions

Civil engineering knows no boundaries of time or place. One can take great pride in the achievements of our profession, which are very much the landmarks of the development of humankind. Society relies upon us for all that it takes for granted and aspires to - clean water, power, transport and communications - for a decent quality of life. Today the facilitators are called civil engineers: In the English speaking world most belong to a professional engineering institution; 200 years ago this was not the case. Society today is facing up to many familiar challenges - sanitation, transport, floods and earthquakes, traditionally the province of the civil engineer; there are the new challenges of sustainability and climatic change. Society is expecting a solution to these. If our Institutions are to retain their relevance then we

28 International Engineering History and Heritage

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O co CO "7, O O I n

O z

I---

. , ~

m


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must ensure our profession meets these challenges. What are the lessons of history for the professional institution of the future? It is clear that the profession has continuously evolved, when as an institution ICE have failed to respond to developments affecting members then others has acted often, forcing change in the form of government regulation, or forcing other institutions to represent specialist groups or localities. Since its foundation ICE has had an international membership.

To serve these members in a global marketplace where communication can be instant and retain a relevance at home is perhaps the great challenge. Traditional methods of learned society activity - the published journal, meetings and conferences - have served for over 150 years; no doubt they have some life in them left but desktop access to information via the Internet is a reality for many members. For professional engineering institutions to maintain their relevance as information sources they must take the lead. The co-operation between ICE and the American Society of Civil Engineers is the sensible way forward if institutions are to maintain their relevance in the face of media empires and, increasingly commercial, university consortia.

Expanding membership in areas where the profession has traditionally been static and university dominated presents its own challenges. There is widespread concern, if not prejudice, that broadening membership is a devaluation of current 'gold standard' qualifications. The danger is that maintaining the gold standard, as Churchill discovered, can be standing in the face of twenty-first century reality. Institutions can only flourish through the support of their members. Institutions must be seen to be active and meet their members' varied aspirations.

In the nineteenth century the Institution of Civil Engineers, through the political dominance of the British Empire could aspire to be a global engineering institution. At the start of the twenty-first century no single institution could be so ambitious. The challenges of the global marketplace and climate warning require a global response from the engineering profession. Co-operation is the key and the Internet is a tool which offers the means of maintaining relevance to a potential membership which is scattered across the world.

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R A Buchanan (1989). The Engineers: A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750-1914. London: J Kingsley.


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Institution of Civil Engineers (2000). Royal Charter and By-Laws. London: ICE.

E Y Kraskovskii (1990). LIIZHT v puti. Moscow: Transport.

R McWilliam (2001). BSI: A Celebration of 100 Years of Achievement. London: ICE.

A Picon (1992). French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press.

C Singer ed. (1954-). A History of Technology, 7 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon.

Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers of the British Isles and Ireland 1500- 1830. London: ICE.2001.

H Straub (1992). Die Geschichte der Bauingenieur Kunst. Basel: Birkhauser.

S P Timoshenko (1953). History of Strength of Materials. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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