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Professor David Ian Blockley BEng, PhD, DSc, FREng, FIStructE, FICE, FRSA is a British Civil and Structural Engineer who has pioneered systems thinking in engineering. . He was Dean of Engineering at the University of Bristol (1994-97) and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering (1989-94) and (1997-2006). He was a Non-Executive Director of Bristol Water (1998-2007)  and consultant to Craddys (1981- 2005). He was president of the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2001-2.

Early Life & Education
Blockley was educated at The Bemrose School, Derby  before gaining a place at the University of Sheffield to read Civil engineering. He graduated in 1964 and stayed on to carry out research supervised by Professor Wilfred (Bill) Eastwood and Alan Wood and sponsored by Stewarts & Lloyds. His 1967 PhD thesis was titled ‘The structural behaviour of rectangular hollow sections’.

Career
Blockley married Karen Bailey in 1966 and they moved to London where Blockley worked as a Development Engineer for the British Constructional Steelwork Association. They moved to Bristol in 1969 when he was appointed lecturer in civil engineering at the University of Bristol working under Professor Roy Severn. In 1968 a block of flats at Ronan Point had collapsed and in the early 1970s a number of box girder bridges also failed. Blockley saw that there were significant gaps between what we know (science), what we do (engineering) and why things fail. The bridging or 'joining-up' of those gaps convinced him that systems thinking was needed. In 1980 he explored the issues in his first book ‘The Nature of Structural Design and Safety’

Blockley wrote on the philosophy and mathematics of uncertainty in engineering, worked with sociologist Barry Turner  and psychologist Nick Pidgeon on human and organisational factors in incubating failure. In the 1990s he began a collaboration with Patrick Godfrey who at that time was working for Halcrow. Blockley invited Godfrey to be a visiting professor at the University of Bristol and together they developed an undergraduate course on civil engineering systems which became the basis of their first book. When Blockley retired Godfrey moved to the University of Bristol in 2006 to head up The Systems Research Centre and organised the Blockley Lectures for example

Blockley was a member of Advisory Panel to the Secretary of State, Dept. of the Environment, on Limestone Mines in the West Midlands (1983-1995)

and of the Advisory Committee to the Health & Safety Commission on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (NuSAC)

Since his retirement in 2006 Blockley has promoted engineering to a wider audience through lectures and his most recent 5 books

Awards & Honours
Blockley was awarded the Telford Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1978 for his paper ‘An Analysis of Structural Failures’. With his first postgraduate student Richard Henderson he was awarded the George Stephenson Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1980 for the paper Structural Failures and the Growth of Engineering Knowledge,. He was awarded with Barry Turner and Nick Pidgeon the Oscar Faber Diploma by Institution of Structural Engineers in 1986 for their paper Design Practice and Snow Loading - Lessons from a Roof Collapse. He was an honorary Professor Austral University (Argentina), Buenos Aires, Argentina; an honorary member Asociacion de Ingenieros Estructurales, Argentina, the Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, Argentina, the Academia Nacional de Ingenieria, Argentina, 1991 and guest of Honour, National University of Tucumán Argentina 1994. He was an Erskine Fellow, University of Canterbury, New Zealand in 1993.

Personal Life
As a student Blockley was a keen sportsman playing football, cricket and athletics. He has continued to support Derby County F. C. through their varying performances. He is married to Karen and they have two children Andrew and Alison.

Publications







 * {{cite web|last1 =Blockley |first1 = David I.|first2 = Patrick S. |last2 = Godfrey |title = Doing it Differently: Systems for rethinking infrastructure (2nd Edition}| date = 2017| publisher = ICE Publications, London|isbn = 9780727760821 | url= https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/isbn/9780727760821 |access-date = 4 July 2018}}












 * About 200 research papers, book reviews etc