ICE West Midlands President’s Visit: A new breed of infrastructure

Giles Atkinson

Giles Atkinson is currently working on the Sizewell C project as technical services lead for the Civil Works Alliance. He has over 30 years experience working for contractors and designers on a number of complex schemes including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, Blackfriars Station, and Crossrail. 

 He is the current ICE West Midlands Regional Chair for 2024-25.

Prof Jim Hall

The ICE’s 160th President, Jim Hall is professor of climate and environmental risks at the University of Oxford. He is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis in water resource systems, flooding and coastal engineering, infrastructure systems and climate change adaptation.  

Hall is a member of the prime minister’s Council for Science and Technology and a commissioner on the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC). He also served on the adaptation committee of the independent Climate Change Committee from 2009 to 2019.  

Hall led the development of the national infrastructure systems model the NIC used in producing its first National Infrastructure Assessment. He invented the Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure in 2017 and remains chair of its strategy board.  

Among his many accolades, Hall was awarded the ICE’s George Stephenson Medal in 2001 and the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water in 2018. He also contributed to the Fourth Assessment Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Chris Rogers

Chris Rogers, professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Birmingham researches sustainability, resilience and liveability of cities, infrastructure and urban systems, and how systemic changes can be designed and implemented to realise greatest value.

He focusses on buried infrastructure and utility services, the structural performance of roads, trenchless technologies, use of underground space and infrastructure systems’ interdependencies. 

Paul Eastwood

Paul Eastwood is a Chartered Engineer and executive director at SEMP, with over 25 years' experience applying systems thinking and engineering across major infrastructure, defence, and aerospace programmes.He is currently supporting Sizewell C in applying systems engineering and requirements management to first-of-a-kind civil works, helping the client navigate complexity and deliver successful outcomes. 

Paul has authored and contributed to a number of industry papers, including Model-Based Systems Thinking: Solving Complex Problems to Improve National Infrastructure and the INCOSE paper Mindful Maturation Matters – The V Model Explained. He was also a contributor to the ICE’s A Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery report series and has guest lectured at Imperial College London and the University of Southampton.