Lord Mair is an authority on
geotechnical engineering, which is the application of the science of soil and rock mechanics, engineering geology and other related disciplines to civil engineering design and construction. His particular speciality is the design and construction of tunnels. His expertise has been sought throughout the world on numerous civil engineering projects involving soft ground tunnelling, retaining structures, deep excavations and foundations. Prior to his appointment to a Chair at Cambridge in 1998, he worked full-time in industry for 27 years. He was Principal Engineer for
Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick, working in their London and Hong Kong offices, 1971–1983; he was seconded to the
University of Cambridge, 1976–1979 to research tunnelling in soft ground. In 1983 he founded the Geotechnical Consulting Group, an international consulting company based in London, with co-founders
Dr David Hight and the late
Professor Peter Vaughan. He has been responsible for advising on geotechnical and tunnelling aspects of numerous major engineering projects world-wide. In the UK he advised on the design and construction of the
Jubilee Line Extension for
London Underground, the
Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now HS1),
Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) and
HS2 projects. He is known for pioneering compensation grouting as a novel technique for controlling settlement of structures during tunnel construction firstly on the
Waterloo Escalator Tunnel Project. The technique was then successfully applied on the Jubilee Line Extension project for the protection of many historic buildings, including the
Big Ben clock tower at the
Palace of Westminster. Compensation grouting was also applied on construction of the
Elizabeth Line (formerly Crossrail) and is now widely used around the world. International projects on which he has advised have included railway and metro tunnels in Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Bologna, Florence, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Rome, Singapore and Warsaw, and motorway tunnels in Bolu, Turkey. He was a member of the French Government Commission of Enquiry into the Collapse of the Toulon Tunnel, 1997. From 2007 to 2014 he was Co-Chairman of the Singapore Government's International Advisory Board on design and construction aspects of all its underground metro and road tunnels. Lord Mair was Chairman of the Royal Society/Royal Academy of Engineering Report on Review of Shale Gas and Hydraulic Fracturing, published in 2012. He was a member of the Engineering Expert Panel for Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) and is currently performing a similar role for HS2. Following the tragic train derailment in Scotland in August 2020, he was appointed Chair of the Task Force Review of Network Rail's Earthworks Management; the report was published in February 2021. In 2022, he was Chair of the Technical Review Panel appointed by EDF to review the technical risks and opportunities relating to marine works tunnel shaft connections for Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. He has recently chaired similar independent reviews of aspects of Sizewell C nuclear power station, appointed by EDF. Persuaded to return to academia in 1998, when he was appointed to a Chair in
Engineering at the University of Cambridge, he championed industry-focused research and grew the Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group into one of the largest in its field in the world. He was the Sir
Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering 2011–2017 and was Head of
Civil Engineering 1999–2016. an Innovation and Knowledge Centre funded by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and
Innovate UK and industry to a total value of £22m. CSIC specialises in sensor technologies and data analysis models, working with industry and partner organisations to accelerate implementation of research outputs to transform infrastructure through smarter information. Its work involves developing new technologies for streamlining construction and for condition assessment and monitoring of ageing infrastructure, with a focus on the development of
wireless sensor networks,
MEMS technologies and new
fibre optic sensing technology. CSIC has around 50 industry partners and has deployed innovative sensor technologies (notably fibre optics and wireless sensors) on around 100 different sites. In 2015 he was responsible for securing £18m Government funding for 50 per cent of the cost of the new Civil Engineering Building on the
West Cambridge site of the
Engineering Department as part of the UK Collaboratorium on Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) initiative. The £38m building, which opened in 2019, contains the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing (NRFIS). In 2020, Mair was appointed chair of the board at One CAM, the company responsible for delivering the
Cambridgeshire Autonomous Metro. == Honours and awards ==