Briefing: The role of historical records in current and future civil engineering practice

Civil engineers design, build, operate, maintain and adapt projects with characteristics that distinguish them from other types of projects created by other engineering disciplines and artists. ■ They transform people’s lives by creating the infrastructure and built environment that underpins the wealth, health and well-being of society. ■ They are complex systems that require a multidisciplinary approach. ■ Most civil engineering projects are unique. ■ They are geographically distributed and mostly stationary. ■ There is a sense of permanence because they can last for one or more generations. ■ They are adapted throughout their life to cope with political, social, economic and technological changes. ■ They generate a wealth of information in the form of objects, letters, minutes, reports, papers, calculations, drawings, images and, now, digital records. It is the wealth of information that is the subject of this paper and how relevant it is to current and future generations of engineers.