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Dame Sarah Springman has spent her life pushing limits — in soil, sport, and leadership. A British-Swiss geotechnical engineer, she’s known for pioneering work on soil–structure interaction, using centrifuge modeling and computation to improve how we build on unstable ground. She spent over two decades at ETH Zurich, eventually becoming Rector, where she steered the university into the digital age and led its rapid Covid response.

She represented Great Britain in triathlon for a decade, winning multiple European and team golds, and helped bring the sport to the Olympic, Commonwealth, and Paralympic Games, which she notes were, in some ways, the most challenging. Now Principal of St Hilda’s College at Oxford, she remains a fierce advocate for women in engineering and sport, and a believer that future engineers must be more than just technically brilliant.

In this conversation with Interesting Engineering (IE), Springman reflects on climate-resilient infrastructure, the limits of AI in geotechnical design, and why future engineers must learn to think critically, long before they lead.

Interesting Engineering: You’ve been a pioneer in geotechnical engineering for decades. What first sparked your fascination with soil and its interaction with structures?

Dame Sarah Springman: Well, I really was more interested in sand. And I loved building sandcastles from the age of two or three. I don’t think they were very good sandcastles at that age.

But I remember that before I became a teenager, we went to Ireland in the summer, and we would go to a beach where water would be flowing between rounded boulders.

I was greatly moved to dam those streams. And with practice I improved and the dams got higher, but they were always washed away because whatever overflow system I had built was not sufficient.

IE: What’s one engineering misconception about soil or the subsurface that you wish more civil engineers understood?

Structural drawings frustrate me when they show the structures stopping at the top of the original ground level. There’s a whole world down there. Without the foundations, the structure wouldn’t stand up.

IE: Climate change is intensifying geological hazards. What breakthroughs or shifts in engineering practice do you believe are most urgent right now?

New structures and infrastructure will be subject to more extreme events in the future. The challenge for any designer, depending upon the design life of what they’re building, is to be able to predict into the future what extreme and what normal loads are going to be in 50 years time.

Designers will have to work with some of the climate scientists and become much more multidisciplinary. It’s going to be very specific to the structure that they’re building, whether it’s a landslide risk, a flood risk, a tornado risk, or a wildfire. All of those hazards(and probably others too) will have to be assessed and designed for.

IE: Many young engineers are drawn to sustainability. How can we better connect research breakthroughs to real-world infrastructure change?

There’s an issue with policy and politics. If the engineers don’t engage in those areas, then others, driven by their own agendas and visions of a world that ignores the realities of climate change, will take the lead. If that happens, the situation will only get worse.

Instead of taking steps now to improve things, they will pause and it’s going to be too late. It’s already probably too late.

As an engineer, I wasn’t remotely interested in policy and politics, but we’ve got to be. I’m afraid that is something that we have to pay more attention to perhaps at university (although courses are already hugely overloaded).

IE: How can engineers be better advocates when the science says ‘slow down’ or ‘build differently’ but the market says otherwise?

That’s really difficult, isn’t it? We just have to be out there. In this world of high profile social media, you need to find people who have a better platform than you do to be advocates for you.

You need to pick your advocates and your platforms carefully. Find areas such as public buildings or places where there’s genuine respect for engineering, which allow you to make an impact.

IE: What’s one low-tech but underutilized solution you think could have massive global impact?

I have a colleague from Togo who designed mineral additives to mix in with clay-based excavation material to make a cement-free concrete. My understanding is that they’re now able to construct a six story building.

They’ve tested cube to measure the compressive strength and built several prototypes. It could have a huge impact in many areas of the world, in Africa and even in Europe.

IE: Engineering is evolving rapidly with AI, digital twins and advanced materials. Which innovations do you think will most transform your field in the next 10 years?

At the moment, the world of geotechnical engineering is highly dependent on algorithmic thinking. If you design something complicated with spatial, dimensional and loading effects, you do a computational analysis.

In the future, I see there being large quantities of data and engineers will be predicting what is going to happen from the data.

AI can be very helpful in some cases for predicting behavior. But somebody has to take responsibility for the design. I’m not sure if this huge flood of data and AI will actually be able to predict some of the stranger soil behaviors: the residual surfaces, the upward flow of water that can turn it into a fluid or even lift a basement to the surface.

I also worry about the future deskilling of engineers, that we’ll be replaced by people, probably not engineers as well, running AI models simply because it’s cheaper and faster. It might be brilliant in some areas, but I still think human beings need to have the ultimate say-so.

IE: Your time as Rector of ETH Zurich put you at the helm of one of the world’s top technical universities. What was the most challenging decision you made in that role?

It was pre-empting the government’s decision to clamp down on staying at home for Covid by 24 hours. We made our decision on Thursday, and by eight o’clock on Monday morning our staff were already teaching online. And they did it absolutely brilliantly.

The government announced its decision late on Friday, but we were ahead of them. We had been monitoring the situation closely, planning, thinking and building our ideas about how to make the transition.

IE: You’ve navigated leadership in both academia and sport, often in male-dominated arenas. How did you learn to assert your voice and influence?

It’s never about me standing up and saying, ‘I’m the one in front – follow me.’ It’s about drawing on the smart ideas of diverse groups to build something with the best chance of success.

That’s how I try to lead. And of course, when a decision has to be made urgently – when it’s risky or there’s an emergency – I’ll step in and make the call.

IE: As someone who’s represented Great Britain in triathlon and campaigned for its Olympic inclusion, how did sport shape your approach to engineering challenges?

One thing I worry about, when I’m facing a really difficult situation, is this: I think back to the start of the Ironman races in Hawaii.

You have 1,500 people all aiming at a ship 1.2 miles away, a little ship with orange sails. You’re trying to find your own water, your own path. So keep calm and carry on.

IE: You’ve mentored many young engineers. What’s one quality you consistently see in those who go on to lead and innovate?

I don’t think one quality is enough. I love people to be curious, because curiosity leads to creativity. They also need energy and enthusiasm. And they need to be persistent, because if you’re innovating, and especially if you’re a leader you are going to face a lot of knocks.

So, for me, the key traits are curiosity, creativity, energy, enthusiasm, persistence, and the ability to build bridges. But you still need a little bit of luck.

IE: If you were starting your career now, in today’s world of climate urgency and rapid tech change, where would you focus your energy?

I’d still be very interested in geotechnical engineering, but probably with a link to bioengineering as well. That’s an area I moved into during the last couple of years of my research career, actually.

IE: What advice would you give to young engineers hoping to make a lasting impact in their field? 

They need to learn how to be engineers first before they worry about lasting impact. So, study hard, work hard, think laterally, and you just have to become a really good engineer.

Focus on that first, but at the same time, build up your ability to think critically, your ability to present your case to others and your ability to lead.

We all want to make a lasting impact, but it’s quite difficult without actually having the fundamentals and the foundations on which to build.