MYLES’S GREAT strength has always been as an intuitive engineer with considerable breadth of vision. In 1972 he fitted perfectly into the role as Division Head of the new Tunnels Division at TRRL. Such a position required his drive and leadership skills but paramount was his vision to anticipate and promote the research needs of the industry.

His task as Division Head was to recruit and lead his TRRL team but equally importantly he was to select and sponsor tunnelling research in our higher educational establishments and where appropriate Consultancies. His intuitive ability to promote good proposals and to weed out others was key in this role: Such talents have also been vital as Chairman of the Editorial Board.

In the early 70’s the Channel tunnel project was in its infancy and his early work was on pilot scale research into improving efficiency in excavating chalk. This led to the full scale tunnelling trials at Chinnor which provided a wide spectrum of benefits including, improvements in rock cutting, the instrumentation of tunnelling machines, the monitoring of ground movements and improvements in site investigation techniques.

It also provided a rapid ‘hands on’ tunnelling education and very practical training for his staff. I had just transferred to TRRL from the National Physical Laboratory and working at the Chinnor trials gave me a rapid introduction to tunnelling. I never did get the chalk dust out of my car.

Myles has the ability to pick winners and his early support for Peter Attewell at Durham University and research within TRRL led to the development of a broad empirical and theoretical basis for the prediction of ground movements around tunnels.

His paper, reprinted here, is an example of his foresight in achieving a range of carefully programmed and supervised field measurements on which the predictive model was based and validated.

In some ways not much has changed in respect of the methodology in predicting ground movements around tunnels since the 1982 paper.

That paper introduced the radial flow assumption and the variable trough width parameter formulation which facilitated the application of the Martos/Schmidt/Peck Gaussian assumption to a wide variety of ground conditions and importantly now yielded subsurface movements. The two dimensional model published in the paper also provided ground slope, curvature and strain which are critical in making structural damage assessments. This approach was soon developed into a three dimensional model and relatively minor refinements have been given since.

The paper remains widely cited and, some 33 years after its publication, is still applied throughout the world. It is perhaps a sad reflection on the failures of the Government to properly support tunnelling research that this remains the case: The continuity provided by Government research is badly missed and a costly loss to UK Ltd.

What has changed dramatically since 1982 is the development of pressurised face TBM’s which have reduced ground movements by almost an order of magnitude. Myles’s early foresight even extended to supporting the developments in slurry shield technology, firstly at the New Cross trials, and later in 1976 at the first commercial application of the Bentonite shield TBM for the Acton Grange Outfall Sewer in Warrington.

His ability in picking winners extended to his support for Andrew Schofield in the early days of the Cambridge Centrifuge.

The research he chose to sponsor at that time supported several Ph.D. students who today have become world leaders in tunnelling and wider geotechnical research.

Later in his tenure he extended support to soft ground SCL works and the Heathrow Express Trial Tunnel again provided an excellent research platform for his staff who at that time included Keith Bowers who has since gone on to become Head of Tunnel Engineering at London Underground.

Myles’s personal talents do not always extend to what he describes as ‘suffering fools gladly’ and, although rare, his forthright approach to management in difficult situations is well known. Above all his ability to lead and inspire loyalty in his staff will endure and his oversight will be sorely missed by the British Tunnelling Society’s Editorial Advisory Board