INTERVIEW | IVOR THOMAS
THOMAS AND THE BTS
“My two years as Chair of the BTS were enormously enjoyable, horrendously busy, and saw two crises: first, the ICE, whose building we use for our monthly meetings, decided they were no longer going to serve the sausage and chips that had become an emblem of the social enjoyment and activity of the BTS. “Talking tunnels over drinks and food, and doing it face to face with other tunnellers is the best way of learning and one of the most valuable functions of the BTS, and the sausages had become a traditional part of it. Happily I was able to persuade the ICE to relent – our sausages even became sponsored – until Covid put an end to face-to-face meetings. “That was the second crisis. We were very lucky when the lockdown came along that Divik Bandopadhyaya and Tom Macgowan of the BTS Young Members (BTSYM) had been developing the You Tube channel. It is always the Young Members who lead the way in the use of new technology in the BTS and I thank them for that. “By the time Covid came along, the channel had already gained traction. We even had a live presentation of a Harding Prize from India. So it wasn’t a big step for us to transform our programme to a purely on-line format, and the number of views speak for themselves. If you want an example of how the BTS You Tube channel has reached a wider audience, have a look at Peter Harris’ talk on historic tunnelling
https://bit.ly/3tN4Pm3 – it is a fascinating talk and the video has had over 7,000 views.
“The on-line format has been a huge success – but I’ll put up a clarion call for face-to-face as well. The sooner we can get back to the bar, and sausage and chips, the better for all of us. I have certainly laid more rings there than I have ever done underground. “I think one of the areas that I would like to have done better in during my period as Chair was in widening our membership. The BTS is a learned society but is not just for engineers. It is for anyone who has an interest in matters tunnelling and I hope has an appeal for anyone working in the many trades and professions associated with the tunnelling process. What of our fitters, electricians and miners? I would like to see them attending and participating more frequently. Mark Bates and his Tunnel Tigers Facebook site (
https://bit.ly/3ro5asj ) seems to have tapped into that wider industry appeal. I would love the BTS to be able to do that too.
Above: Thomas (left) as BTS Chair; with Ed Batty and Peter Coppenhall
manufacturing industry to the economy
and an understanding of the importance of infrastructure for servicing that industry. Ingenuity and engineering underpin industry and infrastructure, and consequently during the industrial revolution engineers had a more prominent place in society. “There is no doubt that their engineering
endeavours were the product of team effort, much the same way as our engineering is today, but these people – Trevithick, the Brunels, the Stephensons – captured the imagination. “If you look at the Crossrail project – and I very much hope it will open this year – it was a fantastic project to build and far more complex than anything the Victorian engineers ever built. But although the television series about it, ‘The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway’, has been very well
received, Crossrail itself really does not seem to have captured the imagination of the wider public. “So for me, if we are to learn anything
from the Victorian engineers, it is to understand the importance of industry and ingenuity, and provide the infrastructure that will allow that sector of our economy to flourish once again. “Why does this matter? Why am I
concerned about the lack of prominence of engineers in wider society? For me, it comes down to basic economics. One has only to look at the decline of manufacturing and industry in our British society over the past fifty years; we have seemingly lost any pretence of being a manufacturing and engineering hub. Napoleon is said to have described us as a nation of shopkeepers, but
if that is indeed what we are then we need something to sell – that something being a product of our ingenuity. “In 1970, manufacturing was 30% of our economy; in 2016 it was just 10%. That data is from the Office of National Statistics. Eighty per cent of our economy is now in services, and I am left wondering if this is sustainable. The governments of the 1970s were sufficiently concerned at the way manufacturing was already in decline that they commissioned a number of reports into engineering and manufacturing to see what could be done to turn the decline around. The Finniston Report was one and it established many of the approaches towards training young engineers that are used today.” Which is where we move towards the
IN THE HOLIDAYS OF MY YOUTH I WAS PACKED OFF TO THE
FAMILY FARM IN WEST CLARE, IRELAND WORKING WITH MY UNCLE. THAT TAUGHT ME THE VALUE OF TIME, AND OF COURSE TEAMWORK. CIVIL ENGINEERING CONSTRUCTION IS ALL ABOUT TEAMWORK AND TIME
BTS and the need for young blood in the profession. “The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) provides an ideal model for the training and chartership of young engineers – what they refer to as the Gold Standard. I am a reviewer for the ICE, so I have some working knowledge of how young engineers gain chartership. “The first part of training is reaching the
academic standard. As a rule, universities provide this: most young engineers take a full-time degree. Do newly qualified
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