Sukhen Chatterjee

Sukhen Chatterjee BE, MSc, PhD, FICE, MIStructE(Retd), graduated in civil engineering with distinction from Calcutta University, India and obtained a doctorate from Imperial College of London University. His early career consisted of designing and building large industrial buildings, power stations and railway bridges. In 1970 he joined the Department of Transport of Her Majesty's Government in London, and was called upon to assist the Merrison Committee for the inquiry into the collapse of steel box girder bridges. On behalf of that Committee, he drafted Part 3 of the Interim Design and Assessment Rules for Steel Box Girder Bridges, which explained the fundamental basis of these rules.

After organising an extensive programme of theoretical and experimental research into stiffened thin-plate structures, he took a leading part in converting the results of this research into practical design rules and drafted the majority of the design code BS 5400:Part 3:1982 for steel bridges on behalf of the British Standards Committee.

Dr Chatterjee became the Head of Bridge Engineering at the Department of Transport, responsible for all standards for design, construction, assessment and maintenance of highway structures and for the technical approval of design proposals for all major highway structures in the United Kingdom. He later directed the strengthening of the Severn Suspension and Wye Cable-stayed Bridges and the feasibility of a second crossing of the Severn.

Subsequently Dr Chatterjee was Director of the London Regional Office of the Department of Transport, responsible for a billion pound programme of major road improvement schemes for the trunk road system in London. Since 1995 Dr Chatterjee has been practising as a civil, structural and transportation engineering consultant.