 He was president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1986.After retirement, Sir Bernard became involved in the investigation of several accidents, the most noteworthy of which was the King's Cross Fire where he headed up the scientific committee which established the cause of the fire and made recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.In his later years, Sir Bernard served as an Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering at Queen's University of Belfast, where a building, housing the Computer Science department, was named after him until March 2017.