The principles of environmental law as they affect engineering decision making

The implied message of recent European legislation is that engineers are only now being constrained to consider the long term aspects of their decisions concerning the environment. In fact, competent engineers have from time immemorial taken into account the long term effects of their work. One only has to see the edifices of classical times and to read the technical papers of Telford and Brunel to recognise that margins to allow for unknown factors and careful statements describing building features and method statements were accepted as necessary by engineers of past generations