Duncan has extensive international experience of geotechnical design for major projects involving foundations, deep basements, retaining walls, tunnels and earthworks. He started his Civil Engineering career with George Wimpey and Co Ltd and then gained an MSc in Soil mechanics at Imperial College in 1977. He then joined the geotechnical section of Ove Arup and Partners Limited, becoming a Director in 1996.
For many years Mr Nicholson has been involved with the design of deep basements and assessing the effects of perimeter wall movements on adjacent structures. This work has also involved specifying instrumentation systems and interpreting the data. The interest in improving these prediction lead to an interest in Peck’s Observational Method. In 1999 he was senior author of the Ciria Report 185 on the Observational Method. He has used this framework on recent basement design and monitoring. He has also been involved in expert advice work where movement control measures have not been properly applied.
The Technical Committee
