Cold calling

The polar regions present engineers working there with a series of unique challenges. It’s sometimes hard enough simply to survive in the extreme cold and perpetual darkness of these environments, let alone see through a successful engineering task.

But while the biggest draw for researchers is often the opportunity offered by such an abundance of ice, the difficulties created by this shifting, cracking, treacherous material are also one of the biggest headaches.

Fortunately, today’s engineers and project leaders are equipped with an understanding of ice that is having an ever greater impact on the way in which they work in some of the planet’s harshest environments.

This is thanks to people like Dr Dougal Goodman, director of The Foundation for Science and Technology, and one of the world’s foremost experts on the mechanical properties of ice.

From his Cambridge University PhD, to time working for BP and the five years he spent in his previous position as deputy director of the British Antarctic Survey, much of Goodman’s career has been devoted to trying to better understand the properties of a material that covers almost 10 per cent of the surface of our planet.