Strategy Session: The Engineer and Ethical Decisions

Richard Bayfield

Richard is the Chair the ICE Ethics Committee and currently the ICE Trustee responsible for ethics. Richard’s civil engineering career comprises senior roles as a contractor, consultant and client. He has also studied law and was Chair of the Society of Construction Law in 2003/4. He is one of four civil engineers who have been made Honorary Members of the society. In 2006 he was appointed to the construction minister’s sounding board of six, chaired by the late Sir Michael Latham, which advised on proposed changes to UK construction legislation.

His early career began with Costain working on major projects including the Thames Barrier. The latter part of his career has involved working with large client organisations including Honda, UCL, New College Oxford, and the Church Commissioners. These client leadership roles have subsequently attracted peer awards for successful project delivery. The client role has majored on establishing a positive project culture, clear project governance and pro-active risk management processes. Richard occasionally lectures and writes about client leadership, including methods such as early warnings and conflict avoidance strategies to establish a true collaborative culture.

Richard often acts as an independent project advisor providing a second opinion or peer review on the status of a project. Sometimes this may be formalised into an Adjudicator’s Decision. Frequently such advice is obtained to avoid a formal dispute. Richard was previously appointed to dispute panels for Terminal 5 and the London 2012 Olympics.

Dame Judith Hackitt

Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer by training and spent her early career working in the chemicals industry – both in manufacturing and also as an advocate for the industry at national and international level. She is a former President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Throughout her career she has championed the importance of Engineering in delivering solutions which provide benefit to society and has been a role model particularly for young women wanting to enter the profession. Her current non-Exec roles are based around her continued passion for Manufacturing and Engineering. She is Chair of Enginuity, Senior Independent Non-Exec at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and a Board member of HS2.

She cares deeply about safety in the workplace and more broadly. From 2007 to 2016 she was Chair of the Health and Safety Executive and in 2017 conducted an Independent Review for UK Government into Building Regulations and Fire Safety in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Since publishing her final report in 2018 she has continued to press for regulatory change and for industry culture change and her recommendations for radical reform of the regulatory system recently received Royal Assent in the Building Safety Act 2022.

Professor Rudi Klein

Professor Rudi Klein is a barrister and President of the NEC Users’ Group. For over 30 years he was CEO of the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group which was the largest representative body in UK construction (by value).In that capacity he led campaigns to reform payment practices which resulted in the Construction Act reforms and the introduction of project bank accounts on government projects.

Following the Carillion insolvency he brought to the notice of the general public, via the broadcast media, the prevalence of poor practices and unethical conduct in the construction industry. He has received awards for his contribution to improvements in industry payment practices and to the development of construction law. He continues to write and commentate extensively on construction issues

David Bogle

Professor David Bogle is Pro-Vice-Provost of the University College London (UCL) Doctoral School and Early Career Research Staff and Professor of Chemical Engineering at University College London (UCL). His research interests are in Process Systems Engineering and Systems Biology. He is currently the President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and was the Scientific Vice President of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers from 2018-21. Professor Bogle was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2005. He chairs the Engineering Ethics Reference Group, jointly sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Engineering Council, which recently published its report ‘Engineering Ethics: Maintaining Society’s Trust in the Engineering Profession’.

As Pro-Vice-Provost he leads the strategy for early career researcher development (doctoral and postdoctoral) at UCL across all disciplines. UCL has over 8,000 research students and 3500 postdoctoral researchers. Professor Bogle is also Chair of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) Doctoral Studies Policy Group and has advised Ministries, funding agencies and Universities across Europe about doctoral education.