The British Geotechnical
Society (BGA) is pleased to announce the finalists for the 49th Cooling Prize
Competition to be held in Manchester on 28 February 2018.
The Cooling Prize is
held annually to celebrate the life of the late Dr Leonard Cooling, past chairman of
the British Geotechnical Society Committee (forerunner of today’s BGA), to
encourage young ground engineers to hone their technical paper-writing and oral
presentation skills. Selecting the finalists was a challenging job this year
with a total of 12 papers submitted.
This years finalists are:
- Christopher
Krechowiecki-Shaw (University of Birmingham) - Joseph Newhouse (Mott
MacDonald) - Alexandra Clarà Saracho
(University of Cambridge)
The topics selected by the
finalists are wide-ranging: Krechowiecki-Shaw will review use of traffic to
treat temporary haul roads., while Newhouse will look at ground movement due to
shaft construction and Saracho will discuss the use of microbially induced
calcite precipitation on earth embankment dams.
The candidates will
present their papers at the event in front of an audience and a panel of judges
with the winner announced at the end of the evening.
The judging panel will
be Arup’s Francesc Mirada, who won the 2017 event, Manchester University’s
Domenico Lombardo, Bolton University’s Paul McMahon and BGA chairman Martin
Preene.
While the judges
deliberate over the winner, the audience will enjoy a 20 minute presentation by
Coffey’s Andrew Smith on major repair works on the A645 Newland Bridge.
The winner will be
presented with a trophy and a £200 prize from Ground Engineering Magazine by
Cooling’s daughter Christine Cooling. The winner’s paper will also be published
in Ground Engineering Magazine and have the opportunity to represent the BGA at
the European Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference in Austria this September.
The event will be held
at the Friends Quaker Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS and
starts at 6pm, details and booking are via the BGA events page, which can be found here.
