The Worshipful Company of Paviors marked a significant milestone as the fiftieth Paviors’ Lecture took place at Imperial College London.

An audience of Members of the Court and Livery, their guests, students and staff of Imperial College, and members of the Institution of Civil Engineers gathered for what proved to be a thought-provoking and inspiring evening — a fitting occasion on which to mark half a century of this distinguished annual lecture.

The main lecture commenced at 5.15 pm, introduced by the Imperial Host, Professor Catherine O’Sullivan, Head of the Geotechnics Section at Imperial College and Editor in Chief of the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.
Professor O’Sullivan welcomed the audience warmly before introducing the Master, Mr Charlie Laing, who offered brief remarks about the Company and spoke of the Laing Travel Award — a personal connection that underscored the sense of occasion.
The fiftieth lecture was then delivered by the Guest Speaker, Professor Mark Girolami FREng FRSE, the Sir Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Cambridge, and Chief Scientist of The Alan Turing Institute. It was a particularly fitting appointment: the Sir Kirby Laing Professorship itself bears a name synonymous with the Paviors, and Professor Girolami’s lecture, ‘Engineering the Future and the Future of Engineering’, set out a compelling vision for how data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are reshaping civil engineering from the ground up.

Drawing on his extensive career bridging computational statistics and engineering practice — including a decade as a Chartered Engineer within IBM before his academic career — Professor Girolami illustrated the transformative potential of data-centric
approaches with a remarkable portfolio of real-world applications. From the world’s first 3D-printed stainless steel pedestrian bridge to Rolls-Royce aeroengineering component optimisation, from sustainable underground agricultural systems to the tools that helped Transport for London navigate the complexities of Covid-19: each example demonstrated how rigorous very heart of modern engineering.

His lecture prompted a lively and engaging question session, chaired by the Master, with roaming microphones and contributions from across the packed lecture theatre — and those following via the live stream in the overspill room (Skempton Room 201) — could be heard by all. The Vote of Thanks was proposed with warmth by the Paviors’ Upper Warden, Alexander Malmaeus.