Smeaton Lecture 2025: Building Britain’s Railways: what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost, from Stephenson’s Rocket to HS2

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. 

Mark Wild

Mark Wild has more than 35 years’ experience of leading complex critical infrastructure projects. As CEO of HS2, he heads one of the UK’s largest current infrastructure programmes, employing more than 30,000 people to build a new high-speed railway between London and Birmingham.

He joined HS2 in December 2024 from SGN, a gas distribution network serving 7 million customers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and southern England.

Wild has spent much of his career building or operating transport infrastructure. He’s served as managing director of Westinghouse Rail Systems, CEO of Public Transport Victoria (Australia) and managing director of London Underground.

As CEO of Crossrail – a £20bn programme delivering an advanced high-frequency passenger rail service through central London – he implemented a recovery plan after the project had suffered delays and cost overruns before his arrival in 2018. Wild departed nearly four years later, having rebuilt the organisation and overseen the completion of one of the world’s most celebrated new railways: the Elizabeth Line.

Wild puts safety and sustainability at the heart of his approach to engineering. He is also passionate about developing a diverse new generation of future industry leaders.

A fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Wild has an engineering degree from Northumbria University and an MBA from the University of Leeds.

Dr Jean Venables

Jean Venables is a Chartered Civil Engineer and chartered environmentalist with an MSc in public health engineering. She has had a long career specialising in water and wastewater engineering, pollution control, resourcing and flood risk management.

In 2008-09, Venables served as ICE President, becoming the first woman to hold this office in the institution’s long history. She is the President of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers for 2025.