THIS YEAR’S HARDING PRIZE winner says he has his parents to thank for fostering his interest in the built environment.
Omar Mohammed, a project engineer with London Underground, spent his early years in Cambridge and it was here that his mother, an architect, encouraged him to appreciate the many grand buildings in the university city.
“My parents didn’t push me into civil engineering but they always encouraged me to look at where I could go and what I could achieve,” Mohammed says. In 2002 the family moved to Sheffield where Mohammed continued his schooling before going to the University of Leeds to study for a Masters degree in Civil and Structural Engineering.
“My strengths were in maths and physics so when I got to my A Levels my parents advised me to pick the subjects I enjoyed and that would also lead to a decent profession. Some people study their favourite subject but then find it’s harder to field that degree in the real world – I was able to tick both boxes.” He realised he had a flair for engineering in his last year of A Levels when his school took part in the Engineering Education Scheme.
“They picked four of us and paired us with a local engineering company, Pandrol Track Systems, who make rail clips. They presented us with a problem they had on the manufacturing line regarding the insulator that goes over the top of the clip and asked us to come up with a solution. We wrote a report, did a presentation and won a Duke of Edinburgh Skills Award for it.
“That was my first taste of engineering in real life and of applying my maths and physics study into problem solving.” His exposure to tunnelling was fairly limited during his degree studies although he did study soil mechanics and geology under Terry Cousens.
“To be honest geology wasn’t my favourite subject as I still preferred pure maths and cement chemistry and things like that,” Mohammed says. “But actually, when you get into the industry geology is a completely different ball game and it’s very interesting.”
His dissertation was on the durability of concrete containing cement replacement materials with Leon Black.
“I wanted to explore the issue of climate change and how by improving the durability of concrete we could ensure better structures, longer life and reduce its CO2 impact,” he says. He was drawn to the subject after working on a module that explored material properties, including the possibilities of making concrete more durable and environmentally friendly.
“It was a really good module,” he says. “They had a really good way of relating it to real life, such as how by changing the mix a little you can prevent concrete cracking and why that is so important in the long term.
“My professors were very supportive and that built an interest in cement constituents and concrete mixtures. Concrete isn’t just sand, cement and mortar, it’s complex chemistry at work.” His interest in concrete has continued into his career and has stood him in good stead with SCL tunnelling projects.
“One of the biggest challenges of SCL tunnelling is the logistics. If one part of what is essentially your production line fails it causes ground movement, programme and cost issues. It’s important to get the mix right, not just so it is consistent and delivers the quality you need but also to prop up that production line and minimise your impact on third parties.”
ENTRY TO INDUSTRY
On leaving university in 2012, Mohammed went straight into Transport for London’s graduate scheme where his first placement was with what was then called the Strategy and Service Development Directorate.
“One of the first jobs I got was helping out with a guidance document for new lines and extensions,” Mohammed says. “It had been in production for quite a long time but I was asked to close out the final reviews and comments and put the finishing touches to it. It gave me a really good overview of how the London Underground (LU) business works.”
Towards the end of that placement he also gained some experience of offsite manufacture, relating to station and platform construction, before moving on to the civils maintenance team. Here he worked as an assistant area manager to the Sub Surface section of the LU network.
“My first job was on a severely damaged parapet on a retaining wall that was overhanging the track. I had to go out and get the design and then seek the permission of the building owners behind the retaining wall. I negotiated with about six stakeholders, so I was really able to hone my people skills.” His next move was to the Victoria Station Upgrade – and this is where he first got bitten by the tunnel bug.
“I wasn’t immediately in a position of great responsibility, of course, but I was given a lot to help out with and towards the end of my placement I was involved with third party stakeholders again,” he says.
“Across the road from Victoria station there was the big Nova development project going on [a mixed use development of offices, apartments and restaurants] and took the lead in the infrastructure protection role. I was the interface between Nova and LU on engineering and ground movement issues.”
By this time Mohammed was keen to acquire some design experience, so he and a fellow graduate trainee pitched for a secondment to Dr Sauer & Partners on the Bank Station Capacity Upgrade.
“We needed the experience for our Institution of Civil Engineers attributes and were looking for pure tunnel design experience – so doing the design ourselves rather than reviewing designs submitted to us.
“It was a benefit for TfL for us to join Dr Sauer & Partners and acquire some pure SCL design experience and it was a benefit for the project as at that stage we were a free resource.
“There is a good relationship between LU and Dr Sauer – and the other tier two contractors at Bank,” continues Mohammed. “And I think we set a precedent because graduate trainees since us have gone on to secondments at Dr Sauer.”
The secondment lasted a year and when Mohammed left, he also came out of the TfL graduate training scheme and went into the “career launch position”, whereby he was placed elsewhere in the business.
“Having been at Bank for some time I wanted to stay here,” he says. “My first major role was as project engineer and tunnels package manager for the Bank Bloomberg Place upgrade project.”
Bloomberg’s new European headquarters are due to open in the heart of the City of London this autumn and LU has leased a structural basement box and has a contract with Hochtief to fit it out with escalators and lifts and to construct two adits connecting the box to the Waterloo and City Line platforms (this line is part of the LU network and operates as a shuttle service between Waterloo and Bank stations, with no intermediate stops).
“As I had some tunnel engineering experience I was quickly moved into the position of being responsible for the adits from project management and project engineering points of view.
“It was a challenging project because we were working right by the station and obviously had to think about ground movement. Co-ordinating works was also testing – for example, we had a passageway closure and had to ensure we utilised that much as possible and delivered as far as we could within that closure.”
Another major challenge was that when Mohammed came to the project there was a methodology change from SCL to traditional squareworks.
“It was an opportunity for me to learn a different aspect of tunnelling and traditional timber tunnelling is definitely very interesting, but it also meant we were under pressure to get the design and construction under way because the change meant we’d lost a little bit of time.”
He adds that while, of course, he wasn’t left to deal with these issues alone, exposure to this sort of challenge was an extremely useful part of the learning curve.
“It stood me in really good stead to get my chartership as well,” he says. “Chartership often asks for that next level of responsibility and that is something that is harder to get as a graduate because if you are only on a project for six or nine months it’s difficult to reach a position of authority.”
The adit structure and waterproofing was completed in January this year and Mohammed was then invited back to Dr Sauer to join the Site Supervision team as an SCL engineer.
“It was certainly rewarding to see the design I helped put together being built, and I think my experience of the design was useful when it came to its implementation.” Mohammed is now working on the station box at Bank. “We’ve just started the piling, so I am looking after that and then we’ll be in excavation work at the end of this year/ beginning of next.”
Having joined the Bank Station Upgrade project shortly after concept design, Mohammed is keen to see the project through and he is looking forward to the time when he can put his name on a project and leave a lasting and tangible legacy.
“To be able to say I’ve delivered this station box would be a great step up so for the next couple of years I’m focused on making sure this gets built on time and to a good quality.” At some point in the future, however, he would like to gain more “early stage” experience, such as route planning.
“I’d like to experience shaping a project from a contract point of view, going out to obtain land and planning permissions or TWAO (Transport and Works Act Orders) applications and so on. I had a taste of that early on in this [Bank] project and it would be good to go back to something like that. I don’t want to stay in construction for the whole time – I would like to jump around the life cycle because I think that makes you a better engineer.” One gap in his tunnelling experience he would like to plug is working with TBMs.
“There would have been an opportunity with Crossrail but at the time I was looking at tunnelling I was already working at Victoria, which was an SCL job and I also wanted to get my design experience, so it didn’t make sense to switch to a different type of tunnelling at that point.”
HARDING PRIZE
In the meantime, of course, Mohammed won this year’s BTS Harding Prize for his paper and presentation on deep pile foundation interceptions in tunnelling at Bank Station.
“I chose the subject because I think it should be talked about more,” he said. “It’s something we are increasingly going to be facing and there aren’t many papers out there on pile interceptions.
“I had finished my chartership the year before and I like to give myself a goal to work towards. If you take life in bite-sized chunks and work towards goals that enable you to take the next step, it will help you progress. It’s all about self-improvement. “Winning the Harding Prize is beneficial to me not just because of the personal attribute but because of the experience – it will help me grow as a person. And I must thank LU, Dragados, the principal contractor on Bank, Dr Sauer and all the other tier two contractors for the huge support they gave me.”
It is this kind of support Mohammed is keen to provide himself in his role as a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning ambassador. He has helped out with activities at schools and at open days at the London Transport Museum and has helped judge engineering models in the Big Bang competition.
“It’s really important to promote the STEM subjects very early,” he said. “When I was at school the questions that got asked most often were ‘why are we doing this?’, ‘what does it matter?’, ‘when am I going to use this in real life?’, so it’s important to explain how learning can be applied and, also, how to follow a route to a career.” He added that he believes the fundamental issue underlying the skills gap is that most young people don’t really understand what civil engineering is.
“Building a project like the Bank Station Upgrade requires people from all different backgrounds and disciplines, from surveying and planning through to number crunching and construction,” Mohammed says.
“Encouraging younger generations to feed this skilled work area is vital.”
