Topic People, Awards
Date 31 Jul 2025
Holly Hargreaves, a student at the University of Edinburgh, has won this year’s Best Civil Engineering Thesis Award, sponsored by Galliford Try, for her outstanding dissertation focused on integrating sustainable mobility into existing infrastructure in heritage cities.
The prize recognises thesis that demonstrate not only academic excellence but also relevance to the real-world challenges faced by the built environment.
In a year where environmental sustainability emerged as a common theme across all finalists, Holly’s thesis impressed Galliford Try’s Engineering Director, Jon Hodgins, for its direct response to one of the UK’s most urgent infrastructure challenges, how to retrofit towns and cities to support low-carbon transport, particularly cycling. Holly’s work stood out among a highly competitive shortlist for its originality, practical insight, and societal relevance.
Holly commented: “I really enjoyed completing my thesis and was genuinely inspired by everyone I interviewed and their passion for the subject. Coming from a small rural village in North Yorkshire, and not being a particularly keen cyclist myself, I was initially apprehensive about the idea of cycling in a city and mostly relied on the bus while living in Edinburgh. However, through my research, I’ve started to feel more inspired to cycle and now hope that one day it will be safe, accessible, and genuinely enjoyable for cycling to become a primary mode of transport in urban centres.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing where this path takes me in my career, and whatever I do, I hope to ensure sustainability remains at the forefront of my work.”
Jon added: "As a country, we still face major barriers when it comes to reducing car dependency, especially in environments that were never designed for alternative modes of transport.
“Holly's work tackled this head-on by exploring the retrofitting of sustainable mobility solutions into our existing road networks, especially in heritage cities where infrastructure change is even more complex. I particularly appreciated the practical design guidance she developed, which demonstrated both technical rigour and a real-world mindset.
Congratulations to Holly on this well-deserved recognition.”