He has consulted on several hundred rock engineering projects in 38 countries during a total of 45 years, has 260 publications as first or single author, and has written two books, one on TBM prognosis, the other linking rock quality and seismic attributes of rock masses at all scales. He has 13 international awards including the 6th Müller Lecture of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM). He developed the widely used Q-system for classifying rock masses, and for selecting rock tunnel and cavern single-shell support in 1974. He was originator of the rock joint shear strength parameters JRC and JCS and co-developer of the resulting Barton-Bandis constitutive laws for rock joint coupled M-H modelling in 1982, which was incorporated as a sub-routine in UDEC-BB in 1985. He has also developed the QTBM prognosis method and QSLOPE for selecting maintenance-free rock cutting and bench-face angles. His chief areas of consulting activity have been in hydropower tunnelling and cavern construction and performance, nuclear waste disposal site characterization, metro tunnels and caverns, and site characterization at high dams. He has given more than 40 keynote lectures in international conferences.

Barton has 50 years of experience from hundreds of rock mechanics and rock engineering projects in a total of 40 countries. Most have concerned hydropower tunnelling and caverns, metro tunnels and station caverns, motorway tunnels, rock slope stability, and major dam abutment characterization. Nuclear waste disposal research projects have been performed in several countries as well, in particular in the USA, in the UK and in Sweden.

He is frequently involved in TBM project trouble-shooting. In 2000 he started his own consultancy in Norway:
Nick Barton & Associates.

He obtained a Ph.D. on rock slope stability from Imperial College, London in 1971. He worked for 25 years in
the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, part of the time as division director, and later as technical adviser.

He is author/co-author of 340 papers in technical journals and conference proceedings, and author
of a book on TBM Tunnelling in Jointed and Faulted Rock in 2000, and of a text book on Rock Quality, Seismic Velocity, Attenuation and Anisotropy in 2006. He is currently writing a rock engineering textbook with Prof. Stavros Bandis.

He developed the well-known Q-system of rock mass characterization in 1974, and a non-linear shear strength criterion for rock joints in 1973/1982, now known as the Barton-Bandis criterion. Further empirical methods linked to Q are: the QTBM prognosis method since 1999, the QSLOPE method (for safe slope angles) since 2015, and the QH2O method (for estimating permeability with depth) since 2007.

He received the 6th ISRM Müller Award, given only once every four years for distinguished contributions to rock mechanics and rock engineering. He has an Honoris Causa (Honorary Doctorate) award from the University of Cordoba, Argentina (2004), and is an ISRM Fellow since 2015. He has received thirteen international awards between 1975 and 2015.