The Fleming Award competition is held at an evening meeting of the BGA each December, with entries being invited during the autumn of each year. The award recognises excellence in the practical application of geotechnics in a project or a part of a project, and is awarded to project teams who have worked on geotechnical projects that have been substantially completed within the two years prior to the award date of December. Each Team is expected to comprise between 3 and 6 people, at least one of whom must be a member of the BGA.

The event is sponsored by Cementation Skanska Foundations.

Submitting teams typically include representatives from Clients, Main Contractors, Consulting Engineers, Specialist Contractors and so on. The award is presented to the Project Team which most demonstrates excellence in geotechnical design & construction. There is an emphasis on teamwork across the different disciplines involved in the project, innovation is also a strong consideration.

A list of previous winners and finalists can be viewed here.

At the event:

• Each team will give a short presentation (about 20 minutes with 5 minutes of questions afterwards). After the presentations have been completed, the judges will retire to consider their verdict.
• There will be a short keynote lecture by David Wright of Jacobs while the judges reach their decision.

.The Judging Panel will be:

• Yvonne Ainsworth, Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions (Chair of Judging Panel)
• Jonathan Morris, Cementation Skanska
• Yuli Doulala-Rigby, Tensar International

Finalists

Keynote Presentation - Fibre optic sensing – A distributed monitoring technology for earthworks?

For several years, the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) at Cambridge University has been researching the potential for use of fibre optics within the civil engineering industry. More recently, Huesker have developed a manufacturing process to incorporate fibre optic cables into geogrid, forming a Sensorgrid, which has shown promising performance when tested under laboratory conditions. This talk summarises the approach and findings of a recent trial to investigate the performance of this technology at a larger scale, under site conditions, together with concepts for future applications. The trial was designed by Jacobs and constructed at the HS2 Phase 1, C1 site by ALIGN. Funding for the trial was provided by the HS2 Learning Legacy.

Speaker biography

David Wright is a Geotechnical Engineer with almost 30 years’ experience including the design and delivery for major infrastructure schemes, investigation of earthworks condition and performance, use and development of digital tools, together with people and business leadership. David is Head of Geo-digital Technology at Jacobs, where he leads the digital transformation of the Tunnel and Ground Engineering teams through the application of various techniques including; design automation, data analytics, 3D visualisation, systems integration, sensors and sensing.