Background:

Modern multi-storey buildings in the City of London are usually supported on piled foundations; long columns of concrete that take the building loads into the ground. When sites are redeveloped each new building has tended to have a new set of deep foundations. This means that the ground is becoming very congested as foundations cannot be easily removed. The lecture will discuss the advantages of the new HIPER pile that minimises the use of concrete, can cool and heat the building and facilitates reuse when a new or modified building is constructed. The HIPER pile was developed with City, University of London which is closely connected to the City of London and was originally established with the backing of the Worshipful Company of Skinners when they first extended their involvement in education in the 1890s an interest which is continuing to expand today mainly with the support of school education.

Speaker:

Professor Sarah Stallebrass became a lecturer at City University in 1992 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1999 and to a Chair in Soil Mechanics in 2010. She was a member of the British Geotechnical Association Committee from 2004 becoming Chairman from 2009 until 2011. Sarah collaborates with colleagues on research including physical and numerical modelling of construction processes in geotechnical engineering. The current focus of this work is innovative sustainable deep foundations and the behaviour of working platforms. Her personal expertise is in the constitutive modelling and numerical analysis of soils especially stiff clays.

She is a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Skinners’, where she is primarily involved in the Company’s educational activities.  She has been a governor of Skinners School for Girls and Tonbridge School and chair of the Skinners’ Kent Academy Multi Academy Trust.  She is currently vice chair of the new Skinners’ Academies Trust.