NCE’s 25th anniversary supplement made predictions for what the world of civil engineering would look like in 2022 – how did those forecasts hold up?
In NCE’s 8 May 1997 issue, the news team reported that the base slab pour at Westminster station on the Jubilee Line Extension had been completed,…
Getting journalists onto site quickly to ascertain the contributing factors that have led to engineering failures has been central to the success of the insight NCE has delivered over the last 50 years. I feel fortunate that, at the time of writing, there have been relatively few major civil engineering…
Bridge collapses have been an ongoing topic for NCE’s news team right from the launch issue. The collapse of the Polcevera viaduct on the A10 in Genoa, Italy on 14 August 2018 killing 43 people and injuring a further 16 sent shockwaves through the industry. It happened just as we…
Unthinkable. It was the single word that captured a stunned reaction to the sight of the New York World Trade Center Twin Towers collapsing into a plume of dust on 11 September 2001. It was the word chosen for NCE’s cover as we raced to capture that dark moment in…
My time as the editor of NCE lasted less than two years. I was the first and last not to have an engineering background and was keen not to overstay my welcome. My predecessor, the late Mike Winney, lived and breathed civil engineering. He had a feel for the profession…
Mike Winney died in 2007. This is written by his close former colleague Ty Byrd.
Mike was a highly experienced reporter with many fine stories to his name but the pinnacle of his achievement did not involve words, it was a drawing. A drawing that illustrated much better than any…
Issues facing members of the Institution of Civil Engineers in the next 50 years go beyond the technical to include ethical and social considerations.
In 1972, the Institution of Civil Engineers’ (ICE) membership stood at just over 45,000 and then president George Ambler Wilson’s theme for his year in office was…
Failure in April 1978 of the Willow Island cooling tower in Wheeling, West Virginia – still considered the worst ever construction disaster in the United States – was perhaps the most significant event during my time on NCE. Fifty one men died when concrete failed during the tower’s 29th lift,…
Why the ICE took the radical step of setting up a magazine for its members and how New Civil Engineer was born.
In the late 1960s ICE secretary Garth Watson was beset with two connected problems: the first was communicating with members and the second was cost. Communications at that time were…
On 23 May 1984, an explosion tore apart the Abbeystead valve house at the recently-completed Lune-Wyre water transfer scheme in Lancashire, killing 16 of a party of visitors and leaving many more seriously injured. It is the only incident I can recall of a civil (or structural) engineering failure in…
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