Enjoy the journey as well as the destination

“A turning point in my early career was when I switched my research from conventional structures to soil mechanics. On a walk along a canal towpath, we passed under an old brick bridge spanning the canal, and I noticed that the side wall of the bridge was gradually slipping down the cutting slope. And I thought, the mechanics of that is an interesting challenge, and clearly there's a lot that we don't know,” says William.

"My field, geotechnical engineering, is to do with structures made in, on, or of the ground. In the railway context, these include slopes, cuttings, embankments, tunnels, retaining walls and foundations, including of the track itself. To understand how these behave over time, we need to understand the mechanics of soils and soil-like materials."

William and David Richards, Professor of Ground Engineering met early in their careers, at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, when William was a young lecturer and David had joined the university as a civil engineering student.

“William introduced me to soil mechanics, and he did it brilliantly,” says David. “I went on to complete my PhD with William and then a research post with him on low-level radioactive waste containment systems.”

William was offered a Chair of Geotechnical Engineering at Southampton, and at the same time, David applied for a junior lectureship in the department. And the rest is history: over 30 years later, William and David are both research leaders in their fields at Southampton.

Fast-track to royal recognition

This year, William and David's work to improve the sustainability and resilience of the UK’s rail system was awarded a Queen Elizabeth Prize for Education – the highest national institutional honour.

“Electric trains are twice as efficient as electric road vehicles, at twice the speed. But they are expensive to run and maintain,” says William. “So the work that we have done here is about building, operating and maintaining railways more effectively and at a reduced cost, with a particular emphasis on electrification, track maintenance, and the repair and refurbishment of old embankments, to avoid having to dig them out and start again, which is hugely expensive.”

“The area I find especially interesting, and where we’ve had a particular impact, is on the design of overhead line electrification structures and particularly their foundations - all part of decarbonising of the railway network through electrification,” says David.

Their work, spanning over two decades, has led to hundreds of millions of pounds of public money being saved and enabled the restart of the UK’s rail electrification programme, which was previously stopped because of costs being too high.

William and David’s career journeys have both been shaped by their willingness to try new things and say yes to opportunities.

William reflects: “I’ve been lucky to have a very varied career, partly because I've never thought: ‘I only do one thing’. If someone comes with an opportunity or a problem, my mindset is ‘Oh, yes, this would be interesting. I'll give it a go.’ And having that curiosity, wondering what's around the next corner, has kept my career very interesting.

“If we’re presented with a soil/structure interaction problem, we tackle it in small chunks until we’ve got a handle on it and will often develop a field trial as this captures all the complexity of variable ground and construction processes. With the right instrumentation, the right care, the right planning and management, this approach can give you the answer to quite tricky site-based problems. And I think we do that very well at Southampton,” says David.

“Our approach has always been to come up with solutions that address the fundamental problem rather than just paint over the symptoms,” adds William. “It’s a real joy to solve a problem in a way that uses fundamental scientific understanding, works and has lasting effect.”