The Moatman Interviews -S6- No.5 "Engineered to perfection" ft @Drleonblack

The cameras open on a building site somewhere in the north of England. As the camera pans from left to right builders can be seen preparing what looks like the foundations of a new house, a large cement mixer has just pulled onto the site and is reversing in as workmen shout to guide it into position. As the camera pans further it zooms in on two gentlemen stood off to one side watching the work take place. Decked out in wellies, high viz jackets and hard hats, the gentleman on the right wearing a white hard hat is pointing out things to the gent in a yellow hard hat on the left.

As the camera moves in closer we can see the gent on the left is none other than our host, Boff Moatman, with his beard tucked into a scarf with safety clamps. Moving in yet closer it looks like Boff and today's guest are already in deep into conversation. "I didn't know you could get white ones?" says Boff, referring to our guests hard hat. Our guest just shrugs and says "you can get all sorts these days Boff". "Indeed, and it's got the safety glasses built in, that's proper Buck Rogers, that is" says Boff reaching over to tweak the front of our guest's helmet. "You have to have the proper kit, Boff, safety is a serious subject. Talking of which I'm not sure those are standard issue safety specs are they?" asks Leon (our guest) as he returns the favour by waggling the arms on the heart shaped sunglasses that Boff is wearing. "My doctor says I have to wear these, I have a rare condition, where if I fall below less than 97% groovy I might die" Leon just laughs and asks "is your GP Doctor Feelgood?" which makes Boff blush.

"ooh hello, didn't notice you there" says Boff, "hello, and welcome to another of our Moatman interviews coming to you today from a building site in Leeds." "Today's guest is a senior lecturer in civil engineering materials and is well accustomed to the inner intricacies of the built environment." *Leon laughs and asks Boff whether that's an euphemism for the pub*. Boff also chuckles, "oooh, I can tell you're going to be mischief", he replies, "Today's guest is Dr Leon Black, who's kindly taking time out of his schedule to watch these fine gents pour the foundations of a house while answering some questions, as you do."    

Okay, as my regular readers will know I like to begin with an ice-breaker to help my readers get to know you a little better. So perhaps we could begin by asking what are civil engineering materials? what's the scope of your domain sir?

Put simply, it’s the stuff which is used to build the world around you. We use a lot of “stuff”; cement and concrete, steel, timber, masonry, asphalt, and I try to give students an understanding of how science can be used to explain engineering performance. I’m a chemist by training, so I try and instill a bit of science into the civil engineering lecture theatre, showing that engineering is applying and harnessing science for the goodness of mankind. I should apologise to Thomas Tredgold for plagiarising his ideas and paraphrasing him so badly, but he’s been dead for nearly 200 years, so I might be able to get away with it. 
    
Personally, I’m a cement geek and can talk for hours about the fascinating world of cement and concrete. I like to pass my love of cement science onto others, and I’m lucky enough to be able to do that for a job. We use over a tonne of concrete per person per year and modern life would not exist without it. But, it is so ubiquitous that people take it for granted and there are a lot of misconceptions about. Everyone thinks they know all about concrete, but it’s a lot more complex than people realise. I could tell you a number of hilarious anecdotes, but we might need to leave that for another time. 

Cement and concrete jokes eh? I presume that probably ends with a punchline along the gist of 'is it hard yet?' *Leon shoots Boff a quizzical look as if to say he doesn't know what Boff means* ahem! anyway, I guess a good follow-up question would be how does a nice boy like you end up on a building site like this? what I mean is how did you end up becoming a senior lecturer in this topic?

Well, I never really anticipated doing this for a job. I’ve always liked learning so found a job where I could continue doing that. I went to university in the late 80’s and studied chemistry. After this I specialised in analytical chemistry and was lucky enough to be offered a chance to study for a PhD. So, here I was, early 20s, looking at the corrosion of lead on historic buildings. I thought it was fantastic. I loved problem solving, working out how materials interacted with their environment and how this affected their performance.
      
Then in the late 1990s I was offered a job in Karlsruhe, southern Germany. This was 
studying the fundamental physics of nuclear materials. Not everyone’s cup of tea, and not mine really, but it paid well. However, after 2 years I’d had enough and found another job using my analytical chemistry to study the structure of cement. I literally would watch cement set under a microscope. But, I did some novel research, networked, scrubbed up and gave talks, and generally did what I could to get myself known. 
    
*stares off into space in the realisation of how “unique” aka. dull, my career path has been. 
    
I moved back to the UK in 2004 with family in tow and worked for 3 years at Sheffield Hallam University. This was more of looking down a microscope at cement [*another wistful,
dreamy look] then in 2007 saw a lectureship in Leeds advertised. I gave it a shot, not really thinking that I would be offered the job, but got it. The rest, as they say, is history. 

There are worse things you could do than watching cement set you know, I mean, some people watch the Coronation Street Omnibus of a Sunday, when they've already seen it in the week, I don't know those people personally, but you know. *Boff looks off wistfully*, so okay that's how you got here, but have you always been fascinated by this subject matter? when you were a little boy did you enjoy building things?

We lived near an old rubbish dump in Rochdale (no, stop laughing, the dump was NOT Rochdale) and I would spend my summers building dens. Invariably, I’d go back the next
day and some older kids would have pulled them down, but it was character building.
      
As a kid I also loved crystals and I would often build a crystal garden, looking at the crystals with a magnifying glass or microscope. So even then I was a bit odd and was doing at 6 what I’m doing 40 years later. 

If you like Rochdale young man, you should try Wakefield, I know some lads that do tours. So, now the important question, what kind of student were you at University? was it a strange transition from being sat in the lecture theatre, to being the one on the stage?

Bloody awful. I was the sort of student who I would hate now (if there were any in my classes). I had a bad attitude and an appalling attendance record. Looking back, although

I love learning, I was never passionate about my degree. There were some good lecturers, but it wasn’t until my final year that I had a fantastic project supervisor, Dr Nickless. He had a passion for his subject which was infectious.

      

But, it was too late and I messed up my first degree. Fortunately, Dr Nickless still accepted me onto his MSc and then I realised that I needed to buckle down and work. So I worked my socks off during my masters, combining study with working in Ladbrokes to pay the rent. From there I was offered a chance to study for a PhD and by this time, with a bit of freedom to “be me” It was during my PhD that I realised that I wanted to lecture. I spent days on end in the lab doing what I loved. I was finding out new stuff and talking about my findings to

other scientists who were (sometimes) interested in what I had to say. I wanted to do this forever, so the transition to being a lecturer sort of came naturally. 

    

I think that my experience as a student helped me and, I hope, helps me to be a better lecturer now. I know that I need to have a passion for my subject and I know that not   everyone will share that passion. There are times when I’ve had to meet with students who maybe haven’t been quite as hardworking as they should have been and I can understand where they’re coming from. I can empathise with students who haven’t got the grades   they’d hoped for, and I hope that this makes me a better lecturer. Maybe the students just think that I’m a daft old fart sharing my boring life history, but I can pretend otherwise. 

Ahhhh so like Obi Wan, you've become the master *nods sagely*, 'something like that Boff, although my Leeds FC brand lightsaber is still on order* (They both laugh). So most people feel nervous about public speaking, but it's a key part of your job, I wanted to ask did it come naturally to you or have you developed any good tricks for coping in front of large audiences?

I’m not a natural speaker, so I’ve had to develop the ability to give talks over the years. I used to host a pub quiz in Bristol when I was a student. That helped me to overcome my nerves, but my style then, shall we say, wouldn’t really be appropriate in a lecture theatre, and a couple of stiff drinks before each lecture would be frowned upon.
      
The best advice I can give is to practice, practice, practice. I didn’t sleep the night before I gave my first lecture, and then I spent the morning trying to practice the lecture while running to the loo every 15 minutes. But, by the time I stood in front of 150 students, I’d been through the lecture about 15 times and knew it backwards.

I must admit that's how I do it too. I've learnt all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody by heart, which is a bit odd, mid speech, but I find it wins over a crowd. *ahem* I guess also we can't cover this topic without asking you what are your favourites? So in your opinion what's the most impressive constructions both of the industrial era and modern era and why?

I love concrete, obviously, and I like modernist architecture and my favourite building is the Chrysler Building in New York. It’s just an elegant art deco structure, capped with a beautiful, shining steel crown. I guess it’s odd (well to me anyway) that my favourite building should be of steel and brick construction rather than concrete, but that’s just an interesting quirk of fate. 
    
But, surpassing even the Chrysler Building in its sheer majesty, is the London sewer system. This was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in response to the Great Stink of 1858. Now I could wax lyrical for hours about this, but suffice to say, his specification of the newly invented Portland cement, and his insistence on not paying for any batch which didn’t meet his standards, kickstarted the fledgling UK cement industry. He introduced so many innovations that without his foresight the London sewer system would have failed years ago. It was his vision and determination, plus considerable skill which helped to change the world for millions, and that is what civil engineering is all about. 

ah, yes, bless him, the much forgotten Bazalgette. I would guess another good question would be that the basic materials for engineering haven't changed much in hundreds of years; but material science is a fascinating and evolving subject, so what does the future hold? will we all be living in houses made of plastic and driving on bridges made of carbon fibre in 20 years time?

I guess that the simple answer is no. There will be modifications to what we’re doing now, but they will be tweaks and slight changes, not wholesale change. The profit margins in construction are too low to allow significant innovation with fancy, new materials. For example, a tonne of concrete costs about £60, while a gram of graphene costs about
£2000. Even through graphene can improve the performance of concrete significantly, it simply isn’t cost effective.  
    
However, what I can see is a need to improve efficiency. We need to design smarter and build smarter. If I can get serious for a minute (as opposed to the light-hearted jovial manner thus far) climate change is a threat and we need to design a society which is resilient and functions with increased flooding or higher temperatures. So, we’ll be using the same materials, just hopefully using them more effectively. 

Hmmm quite so. Perhaps, we could take a change of direction with the next question, we've covered the subject, but what about the man? So I wanted to ask what's life like as a lecturer?

It’s fun. Hard work, but fun. It can take over life a little and I don’t tend to switch off apart from 2 weeks under canvas in Wales each “summer”. I’ve had emails at 1am asking for advice ahead of a 9am exam, which tested my patience a little. But, for a lot of the time I’m my own boss. I have enough freedom to research what I want and I’m surrounded by some great colleagues and students. I’ve had opportunities to travel the world and talk about a subject I love. Most of the travelling involves seeing airport lounges and the inside of meeting rooms, but I’ve been lucky enough to see some great places over the years.
      
Despite my wife and kids telling me that I’m a grumpy old git, the job keeps me young. I’m in daily contact with a lot of young people who have energy and passion for their studies. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and it’s great. 

Indeed and of course your job revolves around a term-time schedule, during the summer breaks do you take the opportunity to do your own research or is it 10 weeks in Fiji to recover from marking?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    
Term time is much busier, but we don’t disappear on holiday when the students go home, despite what Lord Adonis may think. Each summer I supervise about 10-12 students on  PhD and MSc projects, write scientific papers, prepare lectures for the coming year, dealing with the paperwork, writing references for those students who’ve just graduated, and helping those students who now maybe won’t graduate. Over the next month I’ve got to prepare the teaching material for an online MSc on Concrete Technology and write a book chapter on alternatives to Portland cement. This will, honestly, be fun, but it’s not a summer sunning myself on a tropical beach.

Tropical beaches are overrated anyway. I also wanted to ask what you see as the main differences from a career in academia from a career in the commercial sector?

That’s a good question, but I’m not sure that I can answer it. I’ve never worked outside of academia, although I nearly jumped ship a few years ago with an offer to double my salary in industry. I guess that the main advantage is that I don’t have the same short-term goals as in industry, and while I can’t spend money willy-nilly, there is not the same pressure to return a profit on everything we do. Provided I give my lectures when I’m supposed to, set and mark exams and do the other essential stuff, I’m pretty much my own boss, that is liberating. 

Excellent and what's the best advice you could give any of our younger readers who might be interested in a career in civil engineering? what do you need to be good at?

Hard work. Our students work a lot harder than I did as a student, and we push them, but I think that they appreciate it (eventually). There’s a lot that goes in to being a civil engineer. Maths is essential, but there are a lot of other skills as well. Team work is important, as is
problem solving, and an ability to have an eye for detail while also seeing the big picture. While it’s a tough degree, the rewards are worthwhile. Civil engineers are in demand. We have graduates from Leeds working across the world and being paid well for it. But it’s not just about getting a job. Civil engineering gives you a way of seeing the world, and a way of changing it. Eurgh, that sounds cheesy.

Hahahaha, I'd say passionate sir. Okay, I also like to end on a silly question. So if you got a phone call tomorrow from Donald Trump asking for your advice on wall building, what would you do?

I’d build it, no questions asked. But, it would have to be my building it. This may not sound like the answer you were expecting, but basically I’m awful at DIY. I have shelves at home which are made horizontal with blutak and by wrapping tape around supporting screws. If I built the wall, it would fall down within 6 months. Probably not the best advertisement for civil engineering, but I’ll use my “I’m a chemist really” get out of jail free card.

Hahaha excellent, and with that the interview is at an end. Leon, gives Boff a nudge and asks him to see whether the freshly poured cement has gone off. Boff nears the cement foundation and crouches down to give it a prod to test whether it's set, as he reaches out an arm, Leon stood behind him asks 'Is it hard yet?' *before sniggering to himself*