Professional Engineering

The appointment of Professor Rod Smith as chief scientific adviser to the Department for Transport puts a hugely respected yet outspoken engineer at the heart of government.

Smith’s role will be to provide engineering wisdom to politicians and Whitehall mandarins who are due to make some big decisions on issues such as high-speed rail and airport capacity. These are topics close to Smith’s heart, and he doesn’t plan on holding back. “It’s a really attractive challenge,” he says. “In the past I’ve been quite critical of the department and the government and I did wonder if they had invited me inside the tent to shut me up. 

“I might have to be a little bit more measured and circumspect. But it will be my role to offer constructive, informed criticism. If people only want to listen to those who tell them what they want to hear, then you will have a problem.”

He brings enormous experience to the role, having been a lecturer in the engineering department at the University of Cambridge for many years before heading the department of mechanical engineering at Imperial College London. He is the author of more than 300 publications on fatigue and fracture of metals and on many aspects of railway engineering. He is chairman of the Future Railway Research Centre at Imperial and is also the president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

His latest appointment is a welcome sign that the government understands the importance of the role of transport in a modern society and that it appreciates the value of technically sound advice. This, says Smith, is an overdue realisation. 

He says: “Transport is central to our existence – where we work, where we live, where we build houses in the future, and how we stop some areas of the country like the South East from overheating.

“Unfortunately, we’ve never had a proper integrated transport policy. It was one of John Prescott’s favourite phrases when he was transport secretary – but nothing ever happened. It’s not about integration in the short term – getting off a train and on to a
bus, that sort of thing. It’s about the integration of transport within a wider view of policy over the next 30 years – things like how we will manage the switch of transport based on fossil fuels to some form of renewables. It’s about big issues.”

The in-tray at the Department for Transport is certainly stacked high. The decision by the government to go ahead with plans to build a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham comes against a backdrop of vociferous local opposition, while capacity needs to be expanded on many existing routes. Big decisions need to be made regarding airport expansion at a time of concern about the environment. And the thorny issue of road charging needs to be grasped if urban congestion is to be reduced. It will be Smith’s responsibility to provide engineering advice on matters such as these to enable politicians to make informed decisions.

It is perhaps the railways that pose the most imminent challenge. The government announced this month that it wanted to build a high-speed link between London and Birmingham, and eventually on to northern England and Scotland. But delivering the project will prove difficult: it has encountered strident opposition from local groups who are now threatening legal action. 

Smith is sympathetic to opposition groups, but remains convinced that Britain urgently needs additional rail capacity. “I think there’s a fair consensus that High-Speed 2 should go ahead,” he says. “But we ought to have a very clear picture of where we are going with it, and stop thinking about this as a railway between London and Birmingham extended to places like Manchester and Leeds. We need to be thinking what the shape of things will be in 50 years’ time, when it will be a truly national network. How will high-speed rail be integrated into our thinking in terms of regional development? This is a stepping stone to having a really good level of rail service all over the country.”

Smith is aware that HS2 also faces funding challenges. But he believes that, if the political will is there, these obstacles can be overcome. “The funding argument can be put forward about anything at any time,” he says. “But sometimes you’ve just got to acknowledge that investments made to benefit the future are more valuable than investments made to prop-up banks.

“We could have said that we couldn’t afford any project in the past. But it’s not possible to do an  absolutely categorical cost-benefit analysis of these things because it depends where you define the boundaries and what you count as benefit and what you count as cost. 

“There’s a sort of gut decision that HS2 is something that we need, and that we should go ahead and do it.” He thinks the best way to deal with opposition is to compensate those affected in a swift and fair manner. “There will be a small number of people who are adversely directly affected by HS2 – not everybody wants a high-speed train through their garden. But you cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. What we should do is compensate these people handsomely at the earliest opportunity – take the uncertainty out of it and get on with it.”