The Piling 2020 Conference was a Great Success
Piling 2020 was originally intended to be a two day conference at Durham University in 2020 but, as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, it was held as a virtual event between the 23rd and 26th March 2021. On each day there were two parallel sessions where authors presented their papers, 79 in total. Each day there was also and a Keynote Lecture; on Day 1, Stephen Hadley (Central Piling and FPS Chair) covered health, safety and diversity, on Day 2 Professor Byron Byrne of (University of Oxford) talked about Offshore Foundations, on Day 3 Professor Lidija Zdravkovic (Imperial College London) described methods of modelling thermo-active piles and on Day 4 Dr Martin Pedley (GSS Piling) gave his perspective on the Conference as a whole.
In excess of 350 people registered to attend the Conference. Apart from the UK there were attendees from Angola, Australia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Jersey, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the USA making this a truly international event. Throughout each day in excess of 250 attendees were on-line to hear the speakers and participate through the question-and-answer sessions.
BGA Chair Kelvin Higgins said’ The BGA is particularly grateful the Sponsors and Exhibitors who supported this event and made it possible for the Conference to be run at a reasonable cost to the attendees. The feedback from the event was very positive and that despite need for this to be a virtual conference, it was very enjoyable.’
The conference proceedings are available as individual papers to download from the ICE Virtual Library or as a book which can be purchased from ICE Publishing.
