Gordon Masterton (ICE's 141st President)

Insights from an ICE past president

What makes a good ICE president?

Recognition that it’s a privilege to serve the membership for a year, and that you can only see further by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Vision and leadership, but with humility and respect.

What do you think is the most important quality in a leader?

To be trusted, and to have the integrity never to let down those who give that trust.

Do you have a core philosophy/motto?

In my presidential address I referred to George Santayana’s statement: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness… Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Or, put another way, those who don’t study the past won’t understand the future.

In recent years, my work chairing the ICE Panel for Historical Engineering Works has led to our informal oversight group adopting a similar phrase: engineering foresight from hindsight.

Did you learn any lessons during your presidency that you have taken forward in your career?

The experience of working closely with the first cohort of President’s Apprentices was inspiring.

I learned more from them than they did from me.

It kept me in touch with the generation that really mattered and constantly reminded me to prioritise the right choices for the future.

Which individual project or person inspired you to become a civil engineer?

I could see the Forth Road Bridge being built from my bedroom window.

I marvelled at this triumph of elegant design being able to cross such a span, and I was awestruck the first time I was driven across it.

When it came to choosing a course to study at university, I had to ask a careers teacher what course to study to learn how to design bridges.

Within a year I was at the University of Edinburgh studying civil engineering.

What’s your #1 piece of advice for someone just starting their career as a civil engineer?

Get into the habit of mind that drives you to keep learning, and to keep improving. Every new project is a learning and development opportunity.

Do your best with every task, no matter how mundane you may think it is. One day what you learn from it may well be needed.

Never close the door on knowledge and never miss an opportunity to develop your empathy and humanity. Read widely, not just deeply.

What are the most important skills for civil engineers today?

There are more than three!

Think of Stonehenge.

Every project gives you a new area to deepen your learning on a specialised subject. You add a pillar to your knowledge base.

Increasing responsibility through your career gives you an opportunity to see the bigger picture and bring together your pillars of knowledge, with capstones earned through interactions with people: empathy, understanding, respect, fairness, integrity.

Your personal Stonehenge grows with you.

Civil engineers need many pillars and many capstones to be fully equipped to deal with the complex systems in which they operate.

And remember the system includes people and the planet!

Tell us how you work with people to create or foster diversity in the workplace.

Our first President’s Apprentices were a group of seven: four women and three men. Two were from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. The ratios were better than the industry average at the time.

They all earned their places entirely by merit after a rigorous interview process. Diversity was a by-product, but I’m so pleased it was.

The value of learning from different perspectives and backgrounds is hugely important.

It’s important that we never see again careers books entitled The Young Man’s Guide to Civil Engineering. I was given one in the 1970s.

We must call out bad behaviour wherever we see it.

Tell us how you work to address the problems caused by climate change. 

In 2006 there were still climate change sceptics (I hope they’re convinced now).

It took a lot of diplomacy, with Vice President Paul Jowitt being a great ally, to persuade our sister institutions in the USA and Canada that it was time for us to make and sign up to climate change commitments.

But we got there, and that protocol was an important step, a baby step perhaps, but one in the right direction.

I’ve recently been active in the Livery Climate Action Group, and we’ve mobilised 100 livery companies in the City of London to write climate action plans and be held to account.

Even the longest journeys start with a single step.

What do you think is the greatest challenge the industry is facing and how can civil engineers overcome this issue?

The greatest challenge the world is facing is climate change and its consequences.

Civil engineers must build their understanding of the complex system of systems that is our network of infrastructure and cities and determine what we need to change to provide us with a sustainable and resilient future.

And we all need to believe that the most important thing we can do is to engineer foresight from hindsight.