PASSION FOR ENGINEERING PROFILE TRAILBLAZING

NUSTREAM has spent considerable time during each trip building up a relationship with the community and ensuring that they ENGINEER have been consulted during the design process and that they are given a solution to the problem of the lack of electricity that is appropriate for their current situation. A small number of batteries will be offered Professor Chris Wise FREng to residents in surrounding local villages to gauge interest in the battery scheme and if this proves to be successful, research will be undertaken to look at expanding the rural electrification model into these areas. From being a director at of one of the world’s leading Research has already taken place into the surrounding villages for their requirement engineering businesses, Chris Wise decided to go it alone of electricity and suitability of flowing water 14 years ago and set up a small engineering operation with for hydropower. In the near future, team members big ambitions. He tells Michael Kenward how he has, and remain dedicated to ensuring the existing always will, advocate the value of being unconventional. Teaching the local villagers about the hydropower scheme was a vital part of our job. In an area where and newly installed schemes are successful electricity was an abstract concept, we had to manage expectations. Some of the hardest parts of the project have been getting the community onside, engendering ownership, trust and gaining cooperation and that transition to full ownership of the people of Ruarwe takes place smoothly and demanded vast sums of money for access constructing a new kiosk building, supplying gradually, using the relationships built over and change of ownership of land that, until 50 additional batteries and providing further the last two years and the skills developed the request was made, had little or no value. training in operation and maintenance. We by the engineers. NUSTREAM will continue are also planning to complete the small-scale to function as an organisation, hopefully The waiting area of ’s Cable Car in as well as conducting hydropower installation. This will provide recruiting new students and financial backers office on Regent Street in London is R&D for human-powered transport in the US. Important for students additional wattage to supply power to the for the coming years. scattered with awards recognising the Some of his career favourites are the UK Taking everything into consideration, the community centre, and hopefully enough for impressive achievements of Chris Wise projects such as the Arup/Foster collaboration experience has been hugely rewarding for all More information at the primary school. A separate solar panel will and his colleagues. There are none of the for the American Air Museum, at Duxford. those involved. Feedback from the rest of the www.nustreamonline.com be supplied to the health centre to power glass-fronted display cabinets that many “And I love the Millennium Bridge in London,” team revealed that the experience has helped lighting and a fridge for vaccinations. companies prefer, and many of these awards he says. “I am also really proud of the Infinity to expand their appreciation of the wider BIOGRAPHY – the ones for the Olympic Velodrome and Bridge that crosses the Tees in Stockton,” world and how engineering can be used in a Amy Louise Wright is 23 years old Stockton’s , for example – are pointing over his shoulder to a large practical and beneficial way. Our time NUSTREAM now and from Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. tucked away at the back of bookshelves. photograph on the office wall of an elegant management and research skills have NUSTREAM’s aim has always been to provide Educated in County Durham, it was with The Infinity Bridge in Stockton, designed by Wise’s muted approach to these public footbridge – which featured in Infinity Crosses certainly been put to the test, but the biggest a sustainable solution for Ruarwe. All too her sixth form that she first visited Africa. Expedition. The 230m-long concrete walkway successes matches his own description The Tees, Ingenia 43. benefits have come from problem-solving as often, the mentality of volunteers travelling Having graduated from the University across the Tees is supported by a pair of asymmetric steel arches of himself as having gathered an While it is the architects who often part of a team in a remote area where from developed countries for short periods of of Nottingham in 2012, Amy is now “embarrassment of key personal awards”. get the publicity and the prizes for major working well with others was essential to time is well-meaning but not well thought employed by Sir Robert McAlpine North Among the projects that Expedition has such as these, such projects overcoming seemingly insurmountable out: they may end up providing remote, rural East who support her in her management undertaken are international ones such as would not be possible without structural obstacles. We have all improved our fast villagers, who are used to very basic of NUSTREAM. the Las Arenas in Barcelona, a restoration of engineers. But what do these kinds of decision-making. On a personal note, the conditions, with new technology that is not a disused bullring that the company carried engineers do? “I think of it as a spatial trip provided me with a fantastic opportunity practicable for their needs. These installations The author would like to thank out. Expedition worked with architect Renzo discipline,” says Wise. “You are responsible to develop my leadership skills on an are often abandoned, neglected or not Tim Rushby-Smith for his help in the writing Piano on the green HQ tower for Turin’s for generating and creating the three- intense project. maintained and fall into disrepair soon after of this article and for all the family and Intesa Sanpaolo Bank and in Athens on the dimensional space in which everything The team returned in August 2013 the volunteers have left due to a lack of friends who have supported her with the new Greek national Library and Opera. The happens. You have to conceive it, you have to to expand the Energy Kiosk scheme by suitability and knowledge. running of NUSTREAM. company was also involved with the Thames put it there, you have to hold it there.”

42 INGENIA INGENIA ISSUE 56 SEPTEMBER 2013 43 Professor Chris Wise FREng PROFILE

“ If you’re making a big three-dimensional space and stopping it falling down, making it beautiful, understanding the physical drivers, it is fundamentally an engineer’s job. In effect, a good piece of engineering is an architectural product.”

On graduation, Wise was surprised to have intrinsic physical elegance.” The education puts it, “everybody listened to what I was trying to work out what the hell that means!” several job offers to pick from. He joined of engineers is important to Wise, who is saying as if I was correct”, but Wise says that In fact, the business has done some Ove Arup and Partners in 1979. “I accepted both a teacher and a practitioner. His rising he felt uncomfortable. “I thought that that trailblazing in its approach to staff Arup’s offer because they were the only reputation at Arup gave him an opportunity was ridiculous.” Maybe it was just because he development. The company managed to people who had done anything that I had to do something about the state of worked for Arup, “this big organisation which grow through the recession, but when heard of, the Sydney Opera House.” As a engineering education. The company, along is hugely respected. So if I say something project work was thin on the ground the young engineering recruit, Wise had no say with the Royal Academy of Engineering, it must be true.” Wise set out to reflect on company decided not to lay staff off, but in what sort of engineering he could work supported his professorship at Imperial this idea by taking leave of absence. When instead set aside money so that its engineers on. Thanks perhaps to the cathedral project, College when, in 1998, he became the first his chairman Duncan Michael FREng asked could think about their future. “In the first Arup decided Wise was destined to work in Chair of Civil Engineering Design. Wise if he would be coming back to Arup, he year of the recession, we put £400,000 into ‘structures’. “It wasn’t through choice,” he adds. Unlike some practising engineers confessed that he probably wouldn’t and was the pot for people not to work. Instead “I could have been selected for geotechnics, who also teach, Wise’s Chair was a full “immediately, albeit kindly”, shown the door. we said ‘You can come in to the studio industrial engineering, or railways or any professorship. “This was important,” he on Mondays, but you’re not obliged to do variety of options.” explains. “Unlike a visiting professorship, anything’,” says Wise. “We paid them to come While it may have been serendipity that it gave me some authority within the STARTING ANEW in to investigate their own futures.” The short-held notion of leave of absence turned Wise ‘structural’, it was clearly a good department. As a full professor, you have a The experiment has paid off, giving came to an end when he was talking to career move. His ascent within Arup was swift. meaningful hand in shaping the curriculum birth to two new businesses. Useful . The architect was keen to In 1992, he became Arup’s youngest director, and how to teach it.” Simple Projects is a strategic sustainability work with Wise, but there was a snag: as Wise going on to become one of five board At Imperial College, Wise conceived consultancy, while Think Up focuses reports it, “He said, ‘It’s fantastic that you are directors responsible for 500 engineers and and co-founded the Constructionarium, on engineering education, inspiring on your own, but you will need to have a support staff. an initiative that exposes undergraduates career choices, and skills for sustainable practice, otherwise we won’t be able to work At Arup, he worked with such leading to the real work of engineering, or, as the development. together”. In other words, it wasn’t just Wise’s architects as Lord Foster and Lord Rogers, organisation puts it, “a hands-on With the engineering practice growing position with Arup that made people listen a relationship that continues to this day, experience” – see Building To Learn, Ingenia 24. from strength to strength, and branching to him after all. “That was very nice because although Wise dislikes pigeonholing people The course continues to this day, and now out into new areas such as education and [Rogers] was expressing confidence in me as as engineers and architects. He sees no clear takes in students from universities throughout sustainability consulting, Wise began looking an individual.” dividing line between the two disciplines. the UK. for a way to get back into education. The Soon after, in 1999, Wise set up Expedition In many cases, he says, “the engineering is It may be only one week in a four-year opportunity came in an invitation from with Séan Walsh and Chris Smith – now Professor Chris Wise FREng the architecture. If you’re taking on the not degree course, but it is the only time many University College London (UCL), where he with developer Argent. Never one to do the insignificant challenge of making a big three- students are confronted with the reality has doubled his teaching time to two days expected, it seems, in 2008 Wise, Walsh and that influenced his later determination to do dimensional space and stopping it falling of thinking how they would build their a week, again as a full professor, working IN THE BEGINNING Ed McCann, the three remaining shareholders, something about the education of engineers. down, understanding the physical drivers designs – creating scaled-down versions of once more with RAEng Visiting Professor of He may have had a significant impact on gave the company over to the benefit of its School and university gave him the and making it beautiful is fundamentally the Millau Viaduct, the Gherkin and other Innovation in Teaching, Ed McCann. “UCL is structural engineering, but Wise says that he employees, becoming the Useful Simple Trust. opportunity to play plenty of rugby, once the engineer’s job. In effect, a good piece well-known structures. This week at the fertile ground, very enlightened in terms of stumbled into the profession after school. “We wanted to put the future of the whole vying with fellow-student John Inverdale for of engineering is synonymous with the Constructionarium represents, says Wise, its undergraduate programmes,” he explains. Wise’s father was an architect and at that endeavour into the hands of the people the same full-back position, and cricket – architectural product.” “an injection of reality” into their education. time, in the mid-1970s, this field was going who put the most into it, rather than into the which he has played for the last 40 years, as Students learn how to put knowledge gained through one of its periodic recessions, so he wallets of the people who had founded the an opening bowler at the same club. While at university into real-risk practice. IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH counselled his son against an architectural on his degree course, he got to know and place.” Among the new trustees was that same Wise says that the traditional emphasis on TEACHING PRACTICE Students aren’t the only people who career. Instead, a careers advisor at school work with his mentor, Peter Taylor of , Wise feels that the education of architects past Arup Chairman, Sir Duncan Michael. research distorts academic preoccupations sometimes need to think about their futures. suggested that, with his evident ability in who was also engineer-in-charge of the fabric and engineers conspires against this notion. That wasn’t Expedition’s only revolutionary today. Over the past 20 or 30 years, an Around the time he turned 40, Wise’s career maths and science, he should study civil of Salisbury Cathedral. Wise’s involvement “I do think that their training and our training move. The rules of engagement for the new academic’s career has been built around went through what some might describe engineering. Wise went to for with the cathedral led to a student thesis that are not well configured,” he says. “Architects business said, in the first line of the trust deed, research achievements. “You can’t even as a mid-life crisis. Most engineers would what he describes as: “a less-than-inspiring may have had a positive influence on his early are being de-skilled on technical matters. that it should be a “trailblazing endeavour”. become a professor just by being exceptional be happy to be in a position where, as he engineering degree course”, an experience career. Engineers are being de-skilled on context and “We have spent the last four or five years at teaching.” And yet, for many civil

44 INGENIA INGENIA ISSUE 56 SEPTEMBER 2013 45 Professor Chris Wise FREng PROFILE

engineering departments, income from as in other disciplines. Many new ideas he insists. “There are many ways we can DIFFERENT THINKING teaching now exceeds declining incomes come from architects, engineers and the use contemporary engineering thinking on Wise’s growing interest in the bigger picture from research. Students now demand construction sector itself. Here, Wise cites the HS2 so that performance and reliability will explains why he no longer sees massive something in return from their rising fees, role of architects such as Foster+Partners. improve. It will use less embodied carbon, the “vanity projects” as the most exciting activities. however. “They are becoming increasingly “They have really been significant players in operational risk will go down, and negative “I’m getting to the point now where I am not vociferous. If you’re going to teach as a developing that sort of front-end research environmental consequences will be less.” really so interested in just designing glory service to your students, you have got to in the built environment.” For example, 20 He is not, though, optimistic that it will projects. It’s still great to do them, especially if recruit people who can do that. If students years ago, the Foster/Arup/Roger Preston happen. “Even as I speak, I can hear people they can be used as exemplars, but it is much are going to pay the best part of £40,000 to team developed the fledgling idea of natural saying, ‘That is all very well. But that would more important to tackle things that are in be educated over four years, they are right to ventilation and daylighting for contemporary entail a very long programme and then we the mainstream. You have got to hit the mass expect top quality teachers.” buildings and designed it into a revolutionary would have to get approval from everybody market.” In general, says Wise, universities need skyscraper in Frankfurt’s financial area, a all over again.” An ambition to change the face of civil to think about their role in providing 21st conservative sector not normally associated Wise would like to see some equally engineering, and the education of engineers, century engineers. “It is not to provide people with groundbreaking ideas. With an example innovative thinking in other areas of structural seems like a tall order for someone whose who are human calculators who will only like this to point to, other designers had engineering, in the excessive use of materials, parting words are “I don’t think of myself as have a job for a few years before they are something to show to clients and the idea is for example. He points to the London office being particularly gifted”. Wise reckons that replaced by computers.” That is a very small now mainstream thinking. block that Expedition occupies. “You could anyone could do what he has done. “There is part of what a contemporary engineer needs Innovation in construction does not take 50% of the material out of this building nothing particularly cunning about all this. It to know. “I have argued strongly in favour have to be left to imaginative companies. and you would not affect its meaningful is just trying not to conform to the expected of T-shaped designers, or even double-T or Wise thinks that major public projects could performance at all.” stereotype too often, without at least thinking triple T-shaped designers.” These are people deliver novel thinking as well as essential The approach is all wrong, says Public engagement: Chris Wise worked on the BBC series Building the Impossible. In each episode, Wise, there might be another way.” who have a depth of understanding of their infrastructure. He points to plans to build the Wise. “We have just got ourselves into the structural engineer, worked with materials scientists as they attempted to reconstruct an object that So, his advice to young engineers is to do own discipline but who can also understand high speed rail link HS2. “These big publicly this embarrassing cycle of overdesign hadn’t been built for hundreds of years, if at all. As far as possible, they had to use only the knowledge, technology and materials that were available at the time. Among other projects, they rebuilt the first something different – take up playing guitar how they can benefit from expertise of other funded projects have a responsibility to use with conservatism on conservatism on submarine and foiled Egyptian tomb raiders or abstract painting, two of his pastimes – specialists. And those T-shaped people need research and prototyping to deliver more conservatism. You haven’t got enough that can then be woven into the day job. to join up and encircle problems. for less, and to be a springboard for the next people prepared to challenge the big “a whole raft of commercial structures and better job for half the material.” Once again, “I think it is getting increasingly easy for University research may also be less generation of technology,” he says. “We should industrial players who just want to sell you commissioning structures” that make it the resources implications are immense. “For people with more rounded interests to be important in civil engineering because it isn’t go back to first principles and run the HS2 as much stuff as possible.” He feels that the virtually impossible to buck the system. every single beam that gets built anywhere engineers, and to be really good engineers as important a driving force in innovation design through as an intellectual exercise,” industry then institutionalises itself with He is equally agitated by the industry’s on the planet, half of it is doing absolutely at that. Arguably, in the future, they could be failure to do something about the ubiquitous nothing. It could be used in another beam the most important ones because they don’t steel girder. With its I-shaped cross section, somewhere else.” conform.” The last word anyone would use to the design of rolled-steel beams is practically Can Wise persuade the steel industry to describe Wise is “conformist”. unchanged since it was invented more than invest the £25 or £30 million it would cost to set a century ago. Given variable flanges, depth up rolling mills that could roll perfect beams? BIOGRAPHY and width, perfect steel beams would save It is unlikely to happen soon, even though Michael Kenward OBE has been a between a third and a half of the weight of all of the technology already exists. Cultural freelance writer since 1990 and is a ordinarily rolled beams, “and they do exactly change does not come easily to something as member of the Ingenia Editorial board. the same job,” says Wise. “In fact, they do a traditional as the construction sector. He is Editor-at-Large of Science|Business. CAREER TIMELINE AND DISTINCTIONS Born, 1956. BSc Civil Engineering, University of Southampton 1979. Joined Arup and Partners, 1979. Became Arup’s youngest director, 1992. Awarded Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), 1998. Co-founded Expedition Engineering, 1999. Chair of Civil Engineering Design and co-founder of the Constructionarium, Imperial College London, 1998-2005. Made Honorary Fellow of RIBA, 2000. Co-Founded the RSA’s Royal Designers Summer School, 2001, and made co-director, 2005. Elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, 2003. Trustee of Design Council, 2005-2011. Received Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal, 2007. Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers, 2007-2009. Became a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 2008. Founded Think Up Ltd for construction-related education, 2009. Co-founded Useful Simple Projects sustainability consultancy, 2010. Awarded IABSE Milne Medal for Design by the Institution of Structural Engineers, 2010. Awarded the Gold Medals of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Structural Engineers, 2012. Professor of Civil Engineering Design, Design review on Chiswick footbridge crit session with Expedition Engineers, 2013 University College London, 2012 to date.

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