CSIC Where Next ?

John Pelton - December 2025 

Six months ago I was honoured and privileged to be invited to become the chair of the CSIC Steering Group.  Having been involved in CSIC for 12 of its 14 years it has been fascinating to see just how much has been achieved and also to reflect on the direction CSIC’s journey should now take.  We will be running a strategy day in early 2026 to address just that so I thought it might be useful to cast a few pebbles into the pond and in so doing prompt others to build on this blog in exploring the current situation and options for next steps.

In the 2014 CSIC Annual Review, Robert Mair defined the purpose of CSIC as being to ‘transform the construction industry through a whole-life approach to achieving sustainability in construction and infrastructure in an integrated way.’  By 2016 this had transitioned to ‘transforming infrastructure and achieving sustainability in construction through smart information’ and in 2017 it had become ‘transforming the future of infrastructure and construction enabling better decision making through smarter information’.  From 2019 it settled to ‘to transform the future of infrastructure through smarter information’ which remained until 2023 when, following a strategy workshop, it morphed again to ‘smart infrastructure and data driven solutions that enable smarter whole-life asset management decisions’.  Interestingly the CSIC website now states that its ‘overarching aim is to deliver pragmatic solutions to real-world challenges’. 

So what are we to make of these subtle, but significant, shifts?  Firstly I must observe that CSIC is of course a part of an eco-system that is itself responding to ‘real-world challenges’ – Covid, climate change, wars and energy crises being recent examples that spring to mind.  Secondly there is a strong sense of the tension between those who see the challenge in terms of ‘hard systems’, that is those amenable to engineering solutions, and those who see it in terms of ‘soft systems’, that is exploring complexity and confusion as a learning system (with apologies to Peter Checkland).  I would posit that both are essential but that we may be wise to start with the soft systems approach in setting the context for the more reductive solutions that can emerge from systems engineering.  Mark Enzer and others have rightly established the quintessential role of systems thinking in addressing the way we support society with infrastructure solutions.  Perhaps CSIC might recast its purpose and programme of activities around a systems approach, starting with the ‘soft’ side of things?

Right from the start, CSIC set out the impact it wished to have: ‘CSIC’s activities and the application of its tools and technologies will be major transformations in the approaches to the design, construction and use of complex infrastructure – leading to step changes in: improved health and productivity; greater efficiency in design and performance; a low-carbon society, and; sustainable urban planning and management’ (CSIC Annual Review 2014).  Jennifer Schooling, the previous CSIC Director, re-affirmed this in 2017 with ‘enhancing the value of the entire life cycle of infrastructure’.  I would argue that CSIC was initially seen as a ‘public good’ funded through Innovate UK.  Latterly, the mood has changed and CSIC has adopted a membership model, albeit with grateful continued support from Government where possible.  This led to realignment of the membership in preparation for the next phase of CSIC’s strategy but also raised some interesting questions around the understanding of value in this context.  CSIC has regularly set out all that it has been doing in its annual reviews which have highlighted what an outstanding contribution it has been making.  The array of sensor technologies, data analytic techniques, smart solutions and the Carbon Code are a testament to its effectiveness.  But has been less clear about what the value is and to whom?  Robert Mair, in 2020, emphasised that the ‘close collaboration between academia and industry was the keystone of CSIC’s philosophy’.  Is the quantification and hypothecation of value sufficiently clear to enable academia, industry (investors, owners, suppliers and advisors) and Government to appreciate the benefits and, more importantly, to understand how to prioritise them? 

One feature of CSIC remains a constant: the academic excellence delivered by Cambridge University, primarily the Department of Engineering, and reinforced by the presence of (at last count) 4 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an extended list of Fellows of a multitude of professional bodies combined with an academic pedigree that is second to none.  The ‘secret sauce’ that CSIC has created has involved bringing industry into the mix and also more recently to draw in early career professionals through its ECAPP (Early Career Academics and Professionals Panel) network.  This is a rich and diverse mix that provides a fantastic pool of resource and talent on which to base the future CSIC programme.  The challenge now is how to define an effective strategy that allows this amazing capability to deliver the greatest effect! I look forward to the 2026 Strategy Day.