McAuliffe working with the University of Cambridge to develop infrastructure talent

The Future Infrastructure and Built Environment: Resilience in a Changing World (FIBE2) programme will provide more than 60 fully-funded PhD students over the next five years. These talented individuals, selected from diverse academic and social backgrounds, will conduct world-class, cutting-edge research into infrastructure resilience.

Over £12.5m of funding is being provided by industry partners, with organisations such as Costain, BP, HS2, Topcon, Arup, Historic England and Bentley all supporting the university. Nine global academic centres – including MIT and the University of Singapore – are also collaborating on the project

As well as helping fund the programme McAuliffe, and its specialist remediation arm, Geostream UK, will dedicate in-house expertise. This will include providing research support, and sharing learnings from years of working on complex remediation and ground-engineering projects.

The McAuliffe and Geostream UK teams have selected five FIBE2 research areas of interest, where it can add most value:

• Infrastructure resilience threats – environmental
• Smart nanomaterials and innovative cementitious materials
• Carbon reduction + sustainable construction operations, plus design for in-service performance
• Land remediation and inland and offshore pollution control
• Urban-scale interactions with the environment

Dr Chris Evans, technical director at McAuliffe and Geostream UK, said: “It’s critical that the UK makes good infrastructure decisions, and this programme will directly equip students with the range of skills to achieve this.

“We’re honoured to be able to support the University of Cambridge with this important, world-class programme and look forward to helping develop the next generation of PhD engineering students.”

Find out more about FIBE2, here: Click here.