Book Description

Sir Alan Muir Wood sits in the pantheon of great civil engineers of the twentieth century. In Civil Engineering in Context, Sir Alan Muir Wood draws from his long career to place as he says 'civil engineering in context'. The book contains many personal reminiscences of his life as an engineer from early days as a wartime marine engineer in the Royal Navy, through his more than 25 year career as a Partner and Senior Partner with Halcrow and as a tunnelling engineer of world renown. Civil Engineering in Context also presents Sir Alan's strongly held and sometimes controversial views on how civil engineering as an industry has developed since the pragmatic enterprise of the nineteenth century, through a twentieth century where much of the momentum was lost, and how it should be developing in the twenty-first century. Sir Alan ranges across many topics which directly affect the role of the engineer, including management and the law, systems and design, and ethics and politics. He also discusses his contribution and the wider aspects to some of the major projects of the twentieth century such as the Channel Tunnel. Civil Engineering in Context provides an enlightening insight into the civil engineer and civil engineering through the eyes of one of it most eminent protagonists.