Emeritus ProfessorNick Buenfeld, FREng

Nick Buenfeld is Emeritus Professor of Concrete Structures and Distinguished Research Fellow at Imperial College.  He was formerly Director of Research (2001 to 2011) and Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (2011 to 2021). 

He provides expert opinion to lawyers and government departments around the world regarding concrete and concrete structures. Non-compliance, construction defects, premature deterioration (especially corrosion), residual life estimation and repair are recurring themes, underpinned by his research and relating to a wide range of structures including buildings, bridges, tunnels, dams, industrial facilities (including power stations and water & waste treatment plants) and coastal & offshore structures.  Instructing lawyers include Clyde & Co., Herbert Smith, Pinsent Masons, Fenwick Elliot, Osborne Clarke, Devonshires, Deacons (in Hong Kong), Carson McDowell (in Northern Ireland) and ROA Rasiewicz (in Poland).

Prof Buenfeld also provides guidance to the owners, designers and constructors of major infrastructure projects . These have included the Riyadh Metro, Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, the new Los Angeles Cathedral, the Southern Expressway in Sri Lanka, the Beirut Sea Front Project in Lebanon, the Great Man-Made River Project in Libya, the Jubilee Line Extension, King Salman Park in Riyadh, the new Tyne Tunnel, Tsing Ma and Tsing Lung Bridges in Hong Kong, Belgium's high level nuclear waste repository and the Channel Tunnel.

His research addresses the durability of concrete and concrete structures and is aimed at better understanding deterioration processes, developing methods for assessing durability and monitoring deterioration, improving concrete specifications and repair methods and predicting the service life of concrete structures. He has supervised over 30 PhDs and 80 MSc research projects and has published around 250 papers (listed under the PUBLICATIONS tab). More information on his research interests, major grants, awards, members of his research group and the facilities at his disposal can be found via the RESEARCH tab above.

Prof Buenfeld's teaching of undergraduates and MSc students has included the design and analysis of concrete structures, concrete technology, life cycle assessment, materials selection and materials science.

In 2019 he established the Materials Section (also known as the Imperial Centre for Infrastructure Materials), one of 6 sections forming the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Imperial College. This was based around him securing the Department’s largest ever research grant (BEIS/EPSRC - £9.0M) to create the Advanced Infrastructure Materials Lab, conceiving and designing the MSc programme in Advanced Materials for Sustainable Infrastructure, and appointing 5 new members of staff to help deliver the programme and bolster materials-related research in the Department. 

Prof Buenfeld is an elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Concrete Technology.