ANDY ALDER | INTERVIEW
“
grew up in Harrow in northwest London. My dad ran a small building company – small scale domestic work, but he took me to his sites and I drew
up some of the schemes for him, and the building trade was part of my growing up. And there were model railways, technical Lego – all of that. I went through A-Levels enjoying maths, I liked technology, and that led to a civil engineering degree at Leeds. “I have always enjoyed the outdoors – I did a lot with the Scouts – and so construction on a large scale, outdoors, was interesting. Understanding the environment, looking after the environment, that was in there as well – probably not so consciously back then, but still it was there. “At Leeds I found structures particularly
interesting, and also geotechnics – geotechnics because of the complexity, the nuances. It is a challenging subject. You can never simply plug numbers into an equation to solve a problem because there will be a lot of uncertainty to take account of. You have really got to think about what you’re doing. It’s not just following a code, it is proper understanding. There’s creativity there.
“In my last year at Leeds we did a module
on engineering geology and spent two or three weeks studying tunnelling. I loved the way that tunnelling technology pulled it all together – you have the geotechnical problem but there’s a structural engineering problem as well, and you are tackling all of them to create a space for a highway or a road or a rail line. There was real purpose to it; you were integrating a whole bunch of subjects, and I loved that. “On graduating I was applying for work
in the industry and I applied to Halcrow amongst others. They gave me a choice of three options: there was the Highways team, the Bridges team, or the Tunnelling team. At the interview they gave me the opportunity to meet the tunnelling team, which was at Hammersmith. Alan Runacres was head of department, and I spent the afternoon with him, saw some of the projects the team were working on, the Jubilee line and the DLR extensions. I worked for Alan Runacres for the best part of the next 20 years. He was fantastic. “Crossrail was one of the projects being
developed at the time. I spent a couple of years in the office working on the design of that, and then a year on-site on the Jubilee Line extension, at London Bridge. That was really good experience of working
PROJECT MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT PEOPLE AND
SYSTEMS... LEADING PEOPLE THROUGH THIS IS A MASSIVE PART OF THE ENJOYMENT
the city, with a series of TBM drives and underground cut and cover station boxes and ventilation and emergency shafts. It was a Resident Engineer role, with oversight of the design and construction, a good level of responsibility. I love taking accountability for solving things and making sure they are done right. “Ground conditions again were very
with construction teams, working with the mining gangs, and understanding how stuff is really built. I learnt how you can support the construction process with engineering control but also provide support for the kind of pace that things have to move at, to solve problems and then move on. I really enjoyed the interaction with the lead miner, the pit boss, the gang, and the practicalities of bringing them all together with the engineering. “Then I had the opportunity to go onto the
El Salam syphon tunnel in Egypt, which was a series of four 5m-diameter water supply tunnels underneath the Suez Canal. They were dug with a Herrenknecht TBM through very challenging ground conditions – there were quite a few problems in building that project, but it got built. I was there for just under six months, on the tunnel drives and the secondary linings. “The Kuala Lumpur light rail project followed. Right through the centre of
difficult. Very hard limestone was overlain by very soft alluvium, with the limestone top profile alignment varying a lot because of erosion in the past. One day you could be in a full face of hard limestone and then the next day you’re in a full face of soft alluvium. Culturally there was French- Canadian contractor, a Korean contractor, a Japanese contractor, Malaysian contractors; some had local designers, some had UK designers. Some just needed to discuss challenges in a straightforward way to agree methods and plans, some needed advice and coaching, and some needed directing - you just had to adapt your approach depending on the person, and that again was really good experience. “Back in Britain, I worked on High Speed
One. I was on the cut and cover tunnels to Ashford, working in a joint team with Arup and Bechtel, and that was cutting edge of design of cut and cover design. I also led the design checks for the North Down Tunnels, running finite element analysis, in 2D and 3D – I think we were probably close to the cutting edge of how to model spray concrete-lined tunnels at that time.”
Above: Andy Alder was awarded the BTS James Clark Medal in 2023, presented by BTS Chair Rod Young November 2024 | 39
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