A report by Oliver Scales, MEng (Hons) GMICE, Roughan & O’Donovan
On 10 April 2025, the Future of Design conference took place at the University of Leeds, with more than 40 enthusiastic students and young professionals in attendance.
IABSE British Group Honorary Secretary, Mark Bulmer, welcomed the attendees to the event before introducing the first speaker of the day, Graham Thomas, Associate Director at Arup. Graham drew upon his 38 years’ experience in the industry in his discussion on the value of good design. His talk explored the key drivers and enablers of good design and used the A650 Bingley Relief Road in West Yorkshire, the Princes Quay Footbridge in Hull, and the TransPennine Route Upgrade Project as positive examples of value engineering, creating value and good stakeholder management. Graham’s talk was followed by an interactive presentation on the practical application of sustainability principles, delivered by James Rawlin, a civil engineer at Arcadis. James began by asking the audience to define sustainability before discussing sustainable design and construction methodologies and offering examples of their successful application. The final presentation of the first session was delivered by Mercedes Ascaso, a Principal Engineer at DLT Engineering. Mercedes showcased several iconic bridge projects she has been involved in during her career to date, including 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey, Chacao Bridge in Chile and Queensferry Crossing in Scotland, and outlined the many innovative and efficient deck-lifting methods used during their construction.
The morning concluded with a workshop hosted by Dr. Robert Corbally, Principal Engineer at Roughan & O’Donovan. Robert began the workshop by reminding the audience of several recent bridge failures around the world, before highlighting the challenges bridge owners face and exploring current monitoring and assessment techniques. He then split the attendees into groups and asked them to consider several different scenarios related to the prioritisation of bridge maintenance, bridge assessment and exceptional abnormal loading and how they – in the guise of bridge owners – would respond if confronted with the various scenarios. Each group then presented their ideas to the rest of the audience. Robert later demonstrated how structural health monitoring and probabilistic assessment have been used in the assessment of some well-known structures, including Humber Bridge in the UK and the Boyne Viaduct in Ireland In the final part of the workshop, he provided an overview of his research into how artificial intelligence and modern technologies can be incorporated into the monitoring and assessment of bridges.
Following a break for a buffet lunch on the university campus, the afternoon session began with a presentation by Diego Padilla-Philipps, Director at WSP, who shared his belief that the future of design lies in co-design. Diego challenged the delegates to consider what would happen if the principles of co-design were applied from the beginning of project – instead of following the traditional path whereby structural engineers must make an architect’s ideas work efficiently. This was followed by a presentation by Anthea Schneider of Knight Architects, who spoke about her involvement in Network Rail’s FLOW Footbridge, a user-orientated, fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) modular footbridge being rolled out across the UK, and discussed the factors that influenced its design, such as safety, user experience, ease of construction and sustainability.
Anthea’s presentation was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Prof. Nikolaos Nikitas of the University of Leeds, who brought two of the speakers from the earlier sessions, James Rawlin and Diego Padilla-Philipps, together with Junley Chan, Design Manager at J. Murphy & Sons Ltd and Dr. Souvama Boral, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in circular economy at the university, to explore ‘the future of design’ for clients, contractors and consultants. Additional opinions were raised by some of the other speakers from the earlier keynote sessions and workshop, further fuelling the debate and bringing the role of the academic researcher into question.
The event concluded with a closing address from Mark Bulmer, who thanked the sponsors, Roughan & O’Donovan and University of Leeds; the speakers; and the organising committee for delivering a valuable, thought-provoking event. He also announced Damien Poblete as the winner of the paper competition, with his paper titled “When the AiP falls short of objectives, why follow it?”. The day did not end there, however. The speakers and attendees came together for an enjoyable networking event in one of the university’s bars, where they shared their thoughts about the future of design. The IABSE British National Group would like to extend their thanks to the sponsors of the event, Roughan & O’Donovan and the University of Leeds; to Mark Bulmer for chairing the keynote sessions; to the speakers for their informative presentations; to Prof. Nikolaos Nikitas for hosting the panel discussion; to the competition entrants; and to the organising team, Andrew Rolland of AECOM, Bethan Nitsch of WSP, Eleanor Atherton of AECOM, Gursimrat Basran of Arcadis, Oliver Scales of ROD and Subhadip Chandra of Kier.