ICE Lecture given by Catz Engineers

Catz Engineer, Professor Byron Byrne FREng FICE, was joined by Catz alumni Dr Ronan Royston (DPhil, 2018) and Dr Brian Sheil (former Junior Research Fellow) to deliver the biennial “Geotechnical Engineering Proceedings Lecture” at the Institution of Civil Engineers for the British Geotechnical Association. The lecture took place on Tuesday 19 November 2024, exploring doctoral research undertaken by Royston, supervised by Sheil and Byrne, on “monitoring the construction of a large diameter caisson in sand”, in partnership with civil engineering contractor Ward and Burke Construction.

The lecture described the development of novel instrumentation and monitoring equipment, and their deployment onto a live civil engineering construction site. A key objective of the research was to provide real-time feedback to the site engineering team to inform the construction process, as it proceeded, to improve deliverability, reduce cost and mitigate risk. The monitored data also revealed the occurrence of complex engineering behaviour during the construction process that has motivated the development of new and improved design procedures.

The work also won the Institution’s 2022 Crampton Prize on practical geotechnical engineering. The paper can be downloaded as open access from the ICE Virtual Library at “Monitoring the construction of a large-diameter caisson in sand”.