Tony O’Brien, Mott MacDonald’s global practice leader for geotechnics, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering – the highest accolade in the profession.
Each year Fellows of the Academy nominate and elect their peers for this prestigious Fellowship in recognition of their contributions towards the engineering profession. This is the highest national honour that an engineer can receive and is awarded to the UK’s most preeminent engineers representing the nation’s best engineering researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and business and industry leaders.
With over 30 years international experience of transportation, water and energy projects, Tony has led geotechnical design teams on major projects in the UK, North America, central and south-east Asia. He is currently is working on the BART Metro project through Silicon Valley in California, a project that will help make BART better, safer, and more useful for Bay Area residents for years to come. Tony also has extensive experience as an expert witness during dispute resolution and litigation.
As a visiting Professor at Southampton University, Tony has led applied research in earthworks behaviour, soil dynamics and soil-structure interaction. He actively contributes to the work of professional committees and providing industry guidance, for example he currently Chairs an EC7 evolution committee for a new retaining wall code.
An author of over 50 technical papers, Tony is the lead author for the ICE Manual of Geotechnical Engineering foundation design section, authored two CIRIA guides (most recently C791 on advanced numerical modelling) and he recently completed a book on The Observational Method. He has given invited keynote lectures at international conferences in Madrid, Paris, Seattle, Santa Cruz, London and Hong Kong and is the UK’s representative on two International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering committees – Deep Foundations (TC212) and The Observational Method (TC206).
Denise Bower, Mott MacDonald’s external engagement director said: “On behalf of all of us at Mott MacDonald, I would like to congratulate Tony on this well-deserved achievement. Tony has been a pioneer and innovator for the whole of his professional life and has the rare ability to drive his innovations to not just become accepted practice in Mott MacDonald, but also across the industry. His dedication and contribution to engineering is outstanding.”