Cliff Nicholls

Cliff went from school at Kings School, Worcester, to Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, where he read civil engineering, graduating in 1972. He then joined a consultancy, Rendel Palmer and Tritton, where he worked on steel bridge design and then on site at the Thames Barrier for two years. He then joined the Property Services Agency to work on reinforced concrete telephone exchanges. He was then sent back to Imperial College to do research into structural reliability analysis before being transferred to act as the technical secretary to all the UK mirror committees for the Eurocodes. From there, Cliff moved to the Building Research Establishment, first in the Civil Engineering Laboratory at Cardington and then in the Concrete Laboratory at Garston.

In 1986, Cliff joined Transport and Road Research Laboratory (which became TRL Limited) as the head of the Civil Engineering Section in the Technical Services Unit before moving back to the research side in 1988 and rising to Senior Academy Fellow. His principal interests are research into asphalt surface course materials, for which he has been Project Manager for several projects on behalf of the Highways Agency (now Highways England), Ministry of Defence, Transport for London, Transport Scotland and many industry clients. His projects have ranged from hot rolled asphalt to surface dressing and included porous asphalt, high-friction surfacings, thin asphalt surfacings and stone mastic asphalt as well as some on associated materials such as road markings, asphalt materials for lower layers and concrete, particularly for reinstatements. In particular, he was heavily involved in the introduction of thin surfacings to the UK and the monitoring of their service lives as well as the feasibility of recycling them back as thin surfacings. In addition to UK projects, he has worked on European projects. These projects included SAMARIS (looking at environmental aspects of European Standards for pavements looked at environmental aspects of European Standards for pavements), BiTVal and FunDBiTS (both about validating the next generation of bitumen test methods), POTHOLE (looking at assessing pothole repair materials), EARN (looking at the impact of new developments on the availability of road use) and DRaT (comparing four devices used to scuff asphalt). Cliff retired in September 2015, although he is still on standby for occasional work.

Cliff was a member of many standardisation committees for the British Standards Institution and the British Board of Agrément. In addition, he was a UK representative on the CEN committee for asphalt materials and the convenor of the task group responsible for the test methods from 2000 to 2015. Cliff has written over 50 TRL reports and many other conference papers and journal articles as well as editing one book (Asphalt Surfacings) to which he also contributed and writing another (Asphalt Mixture Specification and Testing).

As well as his qualifications from Imperial College, Cliff was aware a DPhil from the Ulster University based on his published works. He is also a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institute of Asphalt Technology and, prior to his retirement, a member of Institution of Structural Engineers, of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation and of the Society of Chemical Industries and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Paviors.