The tower was built as a campanile for the nearby cathedral. To do nothing would have been a recipe for disaster.” “Worse still, the stresses in the masonry walls caused by the lean were so intense that the marble was about to explode. “The inclination had steadily increased to a point where it was just about to fall over,” explains Burland, leaning forward to emphasise his point. “It is unique.”Īfter years of gradually leaning more and more, the tower was in imminent danger of toppling over. “The problem with Pisa is that there are no precedents,” he explains in his quiet voice. Dressed casually, sitting behind his paper-strewn desk, he looks every bit the academic. Your name’s down to head the team that has to find the solution.’” With one phone call, Burland had been handed one of the toughest challenges in construction.īurland is professor of soil mechanics at the department of civil and environmental engineering at Imperial College, London. “And he replied: ‘Keep your sympathy for yourself. I told him: ‘You have my sympathy, that’s an awful responsibility’. “He’d been told by the prime minister of Italy to take action to stop the Leaning Tower of Pisa leaning any further.
“He’d phoned to tell me of the poisoned chalice he had just been handed,” says Burland. It was an old friend, Michele Jamiolkowski, president of the International Committee for the Safeguard and Stabilisation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Ten years ago, John Burland was sitting in his office when the telephone rang. Building Boardroom Digital Construction Academy.
Construction Business: Strategy, Risk and Regulations.
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