Department of Engineering / News / Prestigious 10th Brunel International Lecture hosted by CSIC

Department of Engineering

Prestigious 10th Brunel International Lecture hosted by CSIC

Prestigious 10th Brunel International Lecture hosted by CSIC

The second lecture of the Institution of Civil Engineers' 10th Brunel International Lecture series was held recently in the Department, hosted by the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), following the international launch at London's Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) the night before.

Collectively we are stronger - engineers generating collaborative solutions to strengthen community resilience post-disaster

Duncan Gibb - Executive General Manager, SCIRT

The lecture entitled 'Collectively we are stronger - engineers generating collaborative solutions to strengthen community resilience post-disaster', was delivered by Duncan Gibb, Executive General Manager of the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT).

SCIRT is a collaborative public/private partnership created to deliver the NZ$2.5 billion rebuild of the Christchurch publicly-owned horizontal infrastructure damaged by the series of earthquakes in 2010/11. Duncan's lecture follows SCIRT winning the Brunel Award for 2013 and offered insight into the formation of SCIRT and the challenges involved in rebuilding the infrastructure of an active city post-disaster. Duncan highlighted the need to involve the community in decision making and the importance of empowering people both inside and outside the organisation.

The Department of Engineering's Centre for Sustainable Development PhD candidate Kristen MacAskill (has worked on the Christchurch rebuild) is currently in Cambridge to research decision making in post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction, led the Q&A session with Duncan.

Duncan's lecture combined personal stories with insights into juggling community needs with rebuilding infrastructure and was well received by the Cambridge audience. 

The video of the first lecture in the series, held at ICE on 17 June, is available to watch on the ICE website.

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified.  All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.