Safer infrastructures

How to continuously improve the safety and increase the resilience infrastructure and industries of today and tomorrow.

images shows tall construction cranes against a blue sky with clouds

This is applying cutting-edge discovery science and technical expertise to the engineering assessment of structural integrity and in traditional areas of occupational safety, as well as mapping the way forward to emerging technologies and industries.

It includes concern for how materials, components, joints and structures may fail, including due to degradation over time, and what may be done to address this. It also considers new and more extreme working environments, the new materials used and the development of new techniques to assure resilience. It may also include design and fielding of advanced materials and new manufacturing techniques (such as 3D printing or biotechnology). Work in this theme will inform the regulatory regimes for the technologies and materials of the future.

It will consider how infrastructure can be designed and constructed in a safer way: this may include organisational, cultural and management aspects as well as novel and emerging technological solutions (such as sensors).

It builds on The University of Manchester's expertise in engineering and materials, and links with HSE’s science programme on the UK’s Asset Base and Future Evidence.

Theme leads

Meini Su, The University of Manchester
David Glass, HSE

Theme membership

Proposals and submissions

EPSRC Made Smarter Centre/Hub bid-for cross-cutting research in the area of Digital Manufacturing. Research to cover both technological and societal aspects of the digital manufacturing space.
Patrick Manu has secured internal funding from MACE to recruit a PhD to study construction 4.0 and Health and Safety. Akilu Yunusa-Kaltungo, Paulo Bartolo and Clara Cheung are part of the supervisory team.
Awarded the joint Manchester-Melbourne Research Fund 2020 to investigate the confluence of industry 4.0 in construction (i.e., Con 4.0) with occupational safety and health (OSH) in construction.
Building safety network - EPSRC Network Grant. Neil Bourne, Simon Thurlbeck et al. Collaborative bid led by UoM. Submission date tbc. Proposal development meeting 1 June 2021
COVID-19 Secure and Biosafe Air Transport (COSBAT) - Redraft of the unsuccessful Cranfield led UKRI application. Submission date and funder TBC
Floating offshore H&S Network - EPSRC Network grant. Submission date TBC. Presented to Supergen ORE H&S meeting in May 2021.
Consultancy enquiry from Hudson Contract to look at subcontracting policy in construction sector.
Innovate UK Smart Grant - graphene in cement to include H&S and technical aspects.

Publications and awards

Publications and articles

60 Seconds with…David Glass, Health and Safety Executive
Delivery of the keynote speech at the recent Institution of Mechanical Engineers event on the topic of competence in the world of inspection, examination and asset integrity – taking the opportunity to highlight the RVI work and the potential for work on Additive Manufacture.
On Thresholds for Dynamic Strength in Solids
4D micro-scale, phase-contrast X-ray imaging and computed tomography of HMX-based polymer-bonded explosives during thermal runaway
Contributions to Dynamic Behaviour of Materials Professor John Edwin Field, FRS 1936–2020
The Shock Induced Mechanical Response of the Fluorinated Tri-polymer, Viton B
4D synchrotron X-ray microtomography of fracture in nuclear graphite after neutron irradiation and radiolytic oxidation
The transit to detonation in high explosives
Advances on mode I fracture testing in brittle and quasi-brittle materials with x-ray tomography
Material effects on the spallation response of metals and alloys

Awards

NLP challenge on scholarly discourse and summarisation (Winners)