Structural Awards 2017: Winners and commendations

Jacob Borchers, winner of the Institution’s Pai Lin Li Travel Award 2016, used his grant to research the problems and complexity of implementing the design of seismic-resistant schools in rural Nepal. Numerous organisations face these issues as they attempt to rebuild the country in the wake of the 2015 earthquakes. The research is qualitative: based on interviews with experienced professionals and local residents; and on the observations of the author.

This month’s winner is Alasdair Massie of Peter Brett Associates, who receives an e-book of his choice from the Institution’s current catalogue. Alasdair’s sketches reproduced here illustrate how part of a chimney might be removed and re-supported.

In this section we shine a spotlight on papers recently published in Structures – the Research Journal of The Institution of Structural Engineers. This month, we present an impact statement on 'Prestressing in Coventry Cathedral' - a paper by Chris Burgoyne and Owen Mitchell in which they describe a study of the cathedral to identify the locations of the prestressing tendons. The paper concludes with a question that should concern all engineers: “at what point does a perfectly adequate structure become compromised because of ignorance of what is going on internally?”