Professor R. (Bob) Lark

Overview

Bob is a Chartered Engineer with 40 years of top level Civil Engineering experience in contracting, consultancy, local government and academia. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and was Chairman of ICE Wales in 2008/09. He is a member of the Joint Board of Moderators and Chairman of the Further Learning sub-committee.

Bob spent nearly 20 years in industry before returning to academia. During this time he worked on the construction of the Humber Bridge, was responsible for the detailed design of a number of significant civil engineering projects and was the project manager responsible for the £3M refurbishment of the Newport Transporter Bridge. He was Chief Engineer of a leading steelwork fabricator at the age of 35 and was the design team leader for the feasibility study that led to the construction of the Skye Bridge.

Bob has been a member of the academic staff at Cardiff University since 1994. During this time he has undertaken research on asset management techniques and the behaviour and design of steel and concrete structures, including the development of new cementitious materials for which he has received EPSRC funding and a Royal Society Brian Mercer Award.

He has collaborated with Corus on the development of innovative light gauge steel structures, Lloyd's Register on the condition monitoring of bridges, Atkins on reliability based bridge management and assessment techniques and Celsa on the properties and performance of Grade 500C reinforcement.

He has published over 50 papers in academic journals and at international conferences and secured nearly £5M of funding (jointly and individually) for his research. He has been Chairman and a member of the editorial panel for the ICE’s Bridge Engineering Proceedings; has organised and chaired the ICE International Conferences on Current and Future Trends in Bridge Design, Construction and Maintenance; is a council member of the Concrete Bridge Development Group and Chairman of their working party on Bridge Assessment and is a member of the European fib Task Group TG4.1 on ‘Serviceability limit state design models’.

Bob was the first leader of the University’s multi-disciplinary research forum for Sustainable Construction and is currently collaborating with both industrial and academic partners in the development of sustainable engineering solutions. Bob lectures in design and construction and is the Discipline Director for the School’s Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering (ACE) Discipline. Architectural, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Energy and Environment
* Awarded: ICE Webb Prize for paper in ICE Civil Engineering, 2001 * Chair/Vice-Chair: ICE Int. Conf.  on Bridge Design, Construction and Management, in Shanghai, 2003, Kuala Lumpur, 2005, Beijing, 2007 * Chairman and Editorial Board Member: ICE Bridge Engineering 2005 - 2011 * Member: European Task Group on ‘Serviceability Limit State Design Models’, to refine Eurocodes.