The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is the academic department at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

dedicated to

civil engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

. It is located at the South Kensington Campus in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, along Imperial College Road. The department is currently a part of the college's Faculty of Engineering, which was formed in 2001 when Imperial College restructured. The department has consistently ranked within the top five on the

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in recent years. The department is housed in the Skempton Building, named after the English

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

Sir Alec Skempton, the former head of the department. The departmental building changed its name from ''Civil Engineering Building'' to its current name in 2004, a short time after Skempton's death in 2001.

History

In 1884 the Central Institution of the City & Guilds of London Institute, later the City & Guilds College, appointed a professor, William Unwin, to teach civil and mechanical Engineering, the first teaching in the subject at the predecessors to Imperial College. In 1904, the department was taken over by William Dalby, who held the position until a separate civil engineering department was formed. From 1913 when the Department of Civil Engineering was separated, the Heads were: * 1913–1933: Stephen M. Dixon – ''(Railways and Bridges)'' * 1933–1956: Alfred Pippard – ''(Structural Analysis and Aeronautical Structures)'' * 1957–1976: Sir Alec Skempton – ''(Soil Mechanics)'' * 1976–1982: Bernard George Neal – ''(Engineering Structures)'' * 1982–1985: John Ian Munro – ''(Civil Engineering Systems)'' * 1986–1994: Patrick J. Dowling – ''(Structural Engineering)'' * 1994–1997: Roger E. Hobbs – ''(Structural Engineering)'' * 1997–1999: Tony M. Ridley – ''(Transport)'' * 1999–2011: David A. Nethercot – ''(Structural Engineering)'' * 2011–2021: Nick Buenfeld – ''(Concrete Structures)'' * 2021–Now: Washington Yotto Ochieng – ''(Transport)''

Academics

The department currently consists of 6 main Sections: * Environmental & Water Resource Engineering *

Fluid Mechanics Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them. Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...

Geotechnics Geotechnical engineering, also known as geotechnics, is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. It uses the principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics to solve its engineering problems. I ...

Transport Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...

Structural Engineering Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and joints' that create the form and shape of human-made Structure#Load-bearing, structures. Structural engineers also ...

Materials A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their ge ...

Each section has its own head and laboratories. Research carried out in the department covers experimental, analytical, computational and theoretical work. Additionally, field research is conducted, especially in the Environmental and Geotechnical Engineering sections. Each section is responsible for their postgraduate courses, taught and non-taught. The department also houses the Laing O'Rourke Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation.

Rankings

The college ranked 10th in the world for engineering in the 2018

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The THES''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

subject rankings, and the department in particular ranked 3rd in the world, and 2nd in the UK after

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, in the 2018

. Domestically, the department ranked 2nd on the

Complete University Guide Three national rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually by the ''Complete University Guide'' and ''The Guardian'', as well as a collaborative list by ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times''. Rankings have also been pro ...

's 2019 civil engineering table, and 1st on

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

's 2019 civil engineering university subject rankings.

Study

The department offers both undergraduate and postgraduate level studies, as well as a number of short courses for practising engineers.

Undergraduate

The department offers an undergraduate

Master of Engineering A Master of Engineering (abbreviated MEng, ME, M.E. or M.Eng.) is a Professional degree, professional master's degree in the field of engineering. International variations Australia In Australia, the Master of Engineering degree is a research ...

course which last four years. The department has study-abroad arrangements with universities in Europe, including

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

, TU-Delft,

École des ponts ParisTech École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

and ENSHM Grenoble, as well as in America, Australia and Hong Kong. All students graduating with the MEng degree are also awarded the Associateship of the City & Guilds Institute, ACGI.

Postgraduate

Taught postgraduate courses last for one year lead to a MSc. The department also offers research degrees, leading to either a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

or EngD. The former are designed to last normally for 3–4 years whereas the latter are normally designed to last for 4 years. All students graduating with any of the postgraduate degrees (MSc, PhD or EngD) are also awarded the Diploma of Imperial College, DIC.

Short courses

The department also organises some short courses which involve modules from the taught Master's programme. These courses lead to a certificate of attendance, rather than a degree proper.

Library

The department has a departmental library located on the fourth floor in the Skempton Building. It used to be part of the Imperial College Library, but from 2009 it is a part of the

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

(ICE) library. It covers mainly standard reference textbooks, academic journals, proceedings of conferences, geological maps, theses, electronic information resources and a collection of old historic books, some of which date back to the 19th century.

Alumni

From the department's academics, two have been knighted, several others have received other classes of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

, five people received the

Institution of Structural Engineers The Institution of Structural Engineers is a British professional body for structural engineers. In 2021, it had 29,900 members operating in 112 countries. It provides professional accreditation and publishes a magazine, '' The Structural Eng ...

Gold Medal, nine people delivered the British Geotechnical Association Rankine Lecture and several have been Fellows of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

and 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 senio ...

and have delivered the Geotechnique Lecture. Several notable people have passed from it and some of them are (in alphabetical order): * Nicholas Ambraseys, Geotechnical Engineer & Engineering Seismologist – Founder of Engineering Seismology at Imperial College London * Louis Attrill, Civil Engineer – Olympic Rowing Gold Medalist * Cecil Balmond, Structural Engineer – Founder of Arup's Advanced Geometry Unit * Alan W. Bishop, Geotechnical Engineer – Founder of the Bishop's method of analysing soil slopes * John Burland, Geotechnical Engineer – The person who stabilised the Tower of Pisa * Stephen Glaister, Professor of Transport Economics * Rudolph Glossop, Engineering Geologist * Richard Jardine, Geomechanics *

Cyrus Mistry Cyrus Pallonji Mistry (4 July 1968 – 4 September 2022) was an Indian-born Irish billionaire businessman. He was the chairman of the Tata Group, an Indian business conglomerate, from 2012 to 2016. He was the sixth chairman of the group, ...

, Civil Engineer – Chairman-elect of

Tata Group The Tata Group () is an Indian multinational conglomerate group of companies headquartered in Mumbai. Established in 1868, it is India's largest business conglomerate, with products and services in over 160 countries, and operations in 100 c ...

* David Nethercot, Structural Engineer – Involved in the development of Eurocode 3 * Alfred Pippard, Structural Engineer * Peter Rice, Structural Engineer * Sarada K. Sarma, Geotechnical Engineer – Founder of the Sarma method of analysing the seismic stability of earth slopes and dams *Sir Alec Skempton, Geotechnical Engineer – Founding father of

Soil mechanics Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids (usually air and ...

* Peter Rolfe Vaughan, Geotechnical Engineer – Significant work on embankments and dams * Chris Wise, Structural Engineer – Designer of the Millennium Bridge and founder of Expedition Engineering *Peter Wolf, Civil Engineer, Hydrologist – Founding Professor and Head of Civil Engineering Department at

City University London City, University of London was a public university from 1966 to 2024 in London, England. It merged with St George's, University of London to form City St George's, University of London in August 2024. The names "City, University of London" and ...

* Olgierd Zienkiewicz, Civil Engineer – one of the pioneers of the

Finite Element Method Finite element method (FEM) is a popular method for numerically solving differential equations arising in engineering and mathematical modeling. Typical problem areas of interest include the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat tran ...

and its applications

Links

Past President of the

, (ICE) Paul Jowitt is an alumnus of the department. The previous Head, David A. Nethercot is a past President of the

(IStructE), whereas the current President of the Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics (SECED) is the Head of the Structural Engineering Section, Ahmed Elghazouli, who is also the UK's national delegate for international committees for Earthquake Engineering. The current Director of the RAC Foundation is the Department's Professor of Transport Economics, Stephen Glaister who is also Partnership Director of Tube Lines and has also been a board member of

Transport for London Transport for London (TfL) is a local government body responsible for most of the transport network in London, United Kingdom. TfL is the successor organization of the London Passenger Transport Board, which was established in 1933, and His ...

(TfL). The current Head of the Civil & Environmental Engineering at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, (MIT), Andrew J. Whittle is also a graduate of the department. The department collaborates with the outside academic and professional world through professional bodies and association. Examples are the British Geotechnical Association's Rankine Lecture which is hosted every March at Imperial College, the organisation of the Centre for Transport Studies (a collaboration between Imperial College and

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

), several seminars organised by the

(such as IStructE Gold Medal awardsIStructE Gold Medal
/ref>), and seminars organised by the

and its associated societies such as SECED.

Notes

References

* Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial Colleg

* History of the Departmen

* Gay Hannah (2007) ''The History of Imperial College London 1907–2007: Higher Education and Research in Science, Technology and Medicine''. Imperial College Press, London. . {{Authority control Imperial College Faculty of Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering