Farewell Mike

At the end of 2013 Southern Testing celebrated the retirement of one of our established Geotechnical Specialists at our Christmas Party.

Mike Millar started his career as a technical trainee in the civil engineering department of the London Borough of Bromley, working on drainage, highways and land surveying.  By 1971 he was accepted for officer and pilot training in the Royal Air Force (RAF), where he was posted to Malta, Cyprus, Norway and the United States.

Mike retired from the RAF in 1982 and went on to study a degree in Civil Engineering at University of Brighton.  After graduating he joined Travers Morgan in the Geotechnical Department, spending 7 years on ground investigation and geotechnical design, and becoming a chartered civil engineer.  In 1992 he took up a research post under Rory Mortimore, (internationally as Professor Chalk) at University of Brighton, studying chalk in relation to tunnelling. Mike went on to complete a PhD in 2000 entitled ‘The Stress-Strain Behaviour of Jointed Chalk’.

Mike initially joined Southern Testing in 2000 for 9 months before working with Owen Williams for 18 months; he then returned to Southern Testing in 2002 and for the last 12 years has been working for the company as a Senior Geotechnical Engineer.  Mike thoroughly enjoyed his career and stated that his time at Southern Testing had been the best organisation he has worked for; this was attributed to his fellow employees and Clients!

Mike hasn’t completely retired though; he wanted to stay in touch with Southern Testing and has been retained as our Technical Advisor for our in-house effective stress testing, which he has been involved with setting up, together with our laboratory data logging system.

We all wish him well in his retirement.