Colin Gareth Bailey is a researcher in structural engineering, who became the President and Principal of

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and previously Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of ...

in September 2017. Prior to that, Bailey was Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

. He is a Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

, the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters are located in the UK, wh ...

, the

Institution of Structural Engineers The Institution of Structural Engineers is a professional body for structural engineering based in the United Kingdom. The Institution has over 30,000 members operating in over 100 countries. The Institution provides professional accreditation ...

and a member of the

Institution of Fire Engineers Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...

Early career, education

Bailey left school at 16 to start work as an apprentice draughtsman at Lovell Construction. After completing his ONC, through day release and night school at Slough College, Bailey secured a job at Cameron Taylor Partners, where he become a professional draftsman and completed his HNC. After leaving Cameron Taylor Partners, Bailey worked for Clarke Nicholls Marcel where he designed a number of buildings within London. Aged 22, he began a degree in civil and structural engineering at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = P ...

, graduating with a first class

BEng A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) or a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is an academic undergraduate degree awarded to a student after three to five years of studying engineering at an accredited college or university. In the UK, a Bache ...

in 1992, followed by a PhD in 1995, and postdoctoral work in building fire safety.

Senior career

Following his studies at Bailey became a Senior Engineer at the Steel Construction Institute (SCI), carrying out consultancy, running CPD courses and developing design guides to support the steel industry. He then joined the Building Research Establishment (BRE) as a Principal Engineer, carrying out consultancy, research and development, and design code development into all aspects of structural engineering and fire engineering.

Academia

He joined the University of Manchester in 2002 as Professor of Structural Engineering, and became Head of the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering in 2007. His leadership achievements at Manchester include the launch of high-profile research projects, including th
BP International Centre for Advanced Materials
the National Graphene Institute (£61m of funding support) and the Sir

Henry Royce Institute The Henry Royce Institute (often referred to as ‘Royce’) is the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation. Its vision is to identify challenges and to stimulate innovation in advanced materials research to suppo ...

(£283m of funding).

Charitable activity

As a

non-executive director A non-executive director (abbreviated to non-exec, NED or NXD), independent director or external director is a member of the board of directors of a corporation, such as a company, cooperative or non-government organization, but not a member of th ...

, he is on the boards of several charities and organisations.

Activity as an expert consultant

He has been a third party reviewer for a number of projects and an Expert Witness on a number of incidents including the World Trade Centre. Bailey is one of the four experts to sit on a Government independent expert advisory panel on building safety, set up in December 2017 to advise on immediate safety action following the

Grenfell Tower fire On 14 June 2017, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST and burned for 60 hours. 72 people died, two later in hospital, with more than 70 injured and 223 escap ...

, and chaired by Sir Ken Knight, former London Fire Commissioner and former Government Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser. The panel has produced extensive building safety advice.

Research

Bailey is author of more than 130 research papers, conference papers and practical design guides, and has been awarded nine prizes for his research work. His main specialties are fire safety engineering of structures, membrane action, wind loading and steel-concrete composite systems.

Publications

Bailey is well-known globally in the field of structural fire engineering and has published 10 practical fire design guides/books. This has included the publication of the ‘Bailey’ fire design method, which has been used in design software and distributed to 2,500 companies in 20 countries.

Recognition

In 2018, Bailey was awarded an Honorary Professorship by

Northwestern Polytechnical University Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU; ) is a national key public research university in Xi'an, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The university is a Chinese national Class A Doubl ...

(NPU) in China. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the

2020 New Year Honours The 2020 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebration ...

for services to engineering.

Controversies and criticism

2020 Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

Bailey was leading Queen Mary University of London during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 when the students’ union claimed that it had refused to allow them to access the UK government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) to claim more than their actual wage bill. The University responded by indicating that the students' union was in fact prohibited by government guidelines from being able to claim more than their actual wage bill from the CJRS and that the University had committed to making sure that student workers were paid their expected wages. Students disagreed that this was an accurate representation of the guidelines.

Graphene shareholdings

Bailey is reported to have held substantial shareholdings in

graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

-related companies that have led to accusations of potential conflicts of interest with his university administration roles. In 2016, the

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

reported that Bailey had taken shares in Graphene Lighting, a spin-off from a company (BGT Materials) that held contracts with the National Graphene Institute during Bailey's time as deputy vice chancellor at the

. Bailey denied that there had ever been a conflict of interest, and had resigned his directorships in the companies by December 2015. In 2022, the

University and College Union The University and College Union (UCU) is a British trade union in further and higher education representing over 120,000 academics and support staff. UCU is a vertical union representing casualised researchers and teaching staff, "permanent" ...

branch at

alleged that Bailey had not declared shareholdings in BGT Materials and Graphene Security in the university's register of interests, leading to the potential for a conflict of interest. A subsequent investigation found there was no conflict of interest, with Companies House data showing that the shares have no financial value.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, Colin Living people British civil engineers Academics of Queen Mary University of London Alumni of the University of Sheffield Academics of the University of Manchester British structural engineers Date of birth missing (living people) Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Year of birth missing (living people)