125 Years of Halcrow by Halcrow

125

YEARS

HALCROW

Chairman's Review

Halcrow is 125 years old in 1993. In celebration this Review presents a

history ofthe firm since its inception. It is a story ofprojects and people.

During the life ofthe firm there have been enormous improvements in the

standard ofliving ofthe majority in the UK and in many countries

overseas. Engineers have contributed to most ofthese improvements, so

much so that many people take engineering services for granted.

Complaints arise only if the tap water turns brown, the flight is late or road

maintenance causes a traffic jam.

Halcrow Management Board. Standing (left to right): Graham Johnson, Peter Gammie, Derek Pollock, Tony Cadwallader and Colin Kirkland.

The history presents stories of failure as well as success. At many times the future must have looked bleak to the managers of the day but nevertheless the firm prospered. One remarkable aspect of this survival is that today the firm's core activity remains the study and design of heavy civil engineering projects. This was the core activity of the founders. Expansions and contractions have taken place. Clients have changed. However, the concentration of effort on projects for transportation, maritime installations and water supply, drainage and sewerage is our strategy for future survival.

Sitting (left to right): David Uoyd, Malcolm Fletcher and David Buckley.

, I

Consulting engineets have by tradition been independent. Recently the pressures of capital transition and poor profitability have caused many well足 known firms to change ownership and

CHAIRMAN'S

REVIEW

lose independence. Fortunately conservation of capital has been a high priority in Halcrow for many years.

In 1992, the firm was registered by the British Standards Institution as meeting the requirements 0(BS5750, pan one, In recognition o( its outstanding achievements, Ha1crow won the Queen's Award to Industry in 1972 and the Queen's Award (or Expon Achievement in /976 and /977,

Certificate No FS 20242

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It is seldom possible for engineering design firms to create work for themselves. Public and private sector schemes in our chosen field require vast capital sums. There have been and will always be fluctuations in the market. At present the UK construction industty is in its worst recession for 60 years. Survival depends upon cautious financial management and careful choice of projects to avoid the drastic price war which is taking place. By this means Halcrow will maintain its independence. From a team of two in 1868 to a team of 2000 in 1992, the firm's current capability is clearly a far cry from that of the last century. I know, however, that engineering as a career still holds many of the attractions it held in the days of Thomas Meik. The potential to create small or large schemes and

12,

YEARS

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improve the quality of life day-to-day, whether in developed or developing countries, is a great spur to achievement for many engineers. The opportunity to travel, the sense of adventure, the thrills and the danger are inherent in our profession. These things have not changed and their appeal is enduring. The firm has retained the name of one extraordinary man, an opportunist whose intellect, energy and integrity were outstanding and helped make him a leader of his time. We are proud of his legacy. Our name, however, belies the fact that Halcrow's reputation is no longer dependent on the skills of a small partnership, but on an international network of experienced, highly qualified people. Many of these are recognised experts in fields as varied as the commissions they win worldwide.

Left Vineyard House, Halcrow's main London office. Above: offices at Burderop Pork, Swindon, which are a harmonious mix of Georgian and modern architeaure.

CHAIRMAN'S

REVIEW

It is not unusual for an engineer to spend his entite career with the firm, so great is the range of projects and countries in which we work; nor is it unusual for him, whether young or mature, to move to gain experience elsewhere, often returning with the benefits of that experience to Halcrow later on. The development of the individual through responsibility is our aim, Looking to the future the key to a successful engineering firm remains

with staff who are motivated and enthusiastic for the projects on which they are working. Such enthusiasm permeates the whole firm. This was recognised earlier in the year by the profession's magazine, New Civil Engineer, which gave the title "Happy with Halcrow" to an interview with one of our directors. This comment was echoed recently by a young engineer. She wrote to me from a world tour to say "the good thing about Halcrow is the people in it." The enthusiasm of our design teams to produce innovative and cost effective schemes, the encouragement of staff to identifY with the needs of clients and our desire to participate in major engineering projects will ensure the vitality of Halcrow for the next 125 years.

CONTENTS Chairman's Review 5

A Tenacious Breed

Thomas Meik ftunds the firm in 1868

Meik by Name

The Garden of Eden

The Civils' War

WiLliam HaLcrow's war e./firt in the 1940s

The Hydro Boys

Post-war hydroelectric schemes in Scotland

Versatility and Initiative

Expansion in the 1960s and 1970s

The Glories of the Gulf

The Middle Eastern boom ofthe 1970s

The Thrill of the Chase

Consolidation and diversification

Meik's sons rise to fizme in the early 1900s George Buchanan: the enigma

Halcrow Offices Worldwide Acknowledgmen ts

c::

MALCOLM FLETCHER Chairman

125

YEARS

HALCROW

A Tenacious Breed

The Industrial Revolution developed in Great Britain in the

18th and 19th centuries, thanks to technological advances with new basic

materials, new energy sources, the invention ofmachines and the

organisation ofcheap labour in factories. New canals and roads improved

transport and communications.

Construction highlights ofthe 19th century include the opening ofthe

Stockton-Darlington Railway in 1825, the completion ofthe

Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1859 and the major exhibition ofBritish

industrialpower at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, 1851.

"The profession of the Civil Engineer is under a cloud," wrote a distraught practitioner in 1869. "Offices are closed, public works are discontinued, draughtsmen and pupils are unemployed ... have the Engineers of Great Britain sprung up like a mushroom growth to disappear?"

Isambard Kingdom Brunei (1806-1859), probably Britain's most famous engineer. His celebrated achievements include the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge, the Great Western Railway and major ships

such as the Great Eastern (1858).

By the late 1860s the 'Great Engineer' was no more. The large engineering teams which had been assembled to serve renowned masters such as Brunel and Stephenson found themselves facing an uncertain future. Other nations' engineers were eroding British superiority. Compared with the Germans, the British were slow in applying scientific techniques to back up their work. "Even without mineralogy, a man may be considered a great geologist in England," wrote Leibig to Faraday. It was as if the

nation that had sparked off the Industrial Revolution had finally spluttered to a halt. A wave of anti-industrialisation swept the country. Nostalgia for a picture足 book life in the countryside, which had never really existed, seeped into the work of contemporary artists and writers. Flocks of lambs gambolled through lines of poetry and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites.

TENACIOUS

BREED

"The countryside of the mind was everything that industrial sociery was not - ancient, slow-moving, stable, cosy and spiritual." (RA Buchanan, 'The Great Engineers'). Yet the 19th cen tury engineers were made of stern stuff and could weather a change of fortune. Many of them came from backgrounds where hard work was a prerequisite for survival and the habit, once formed, lasted a

professional lifetime. They had absorbed the work ethic from religious sources and parents and from masters during apprenticeship. Moteover, they were driven by a passion for their vocation to the exclusion of other activities. The Illustrated London News commented that "the men who made England great by their skills, enterptise and power of organisation were of a far different calibre from the officials the government employs." Just as strong as the British sentiments for country life was a pride in the British Empire. Many engineers made their names "with admirable industry and perseverance, in spite of every discouragement" in undreamed-of conditions of hardship to bring irrigation and potable water to those who might otherwise die.

In 1868, Thomos Meik's offices were ot 6 York Place, Edinburgh. (Photogroph taken in 1992).

Thomas Meik was of this tenacious breed. He was born in 1812 to a respected Perthshire family which had and an elegant lighthouse, it was time fallen on lean times. Following to move on. school, university in Edinburgh and his first apprenticeship to a Meik had already undertaken several wheelwright, he acquired a second civil engine'ering commissions for apprenticeship with John Steedman, clients other than his main employer. an engineer and contractor who was At Blyth Harbour, for instance, he had working on the Hutcheson Bridge in acted as consulting engineer since Glasgow. His first 1862. His impact long-term post was there was "Scotland and the as assistant engineer considerable. He to WC Mylne of the knew how to harness north east were New River Company, Blyth's natural packed with brawn London. resources to maximise its export and brainpower. " In 1845, at the age of coal. In 1868 of 33, Meik achieved he went into a major coup. He was appointed partnership with his one-time pupil, engineer to the River Wear Commission WD Nisbet, and opened offices in and in 1859, the commission took Edinburgh and Sunderland. This is over the construction of Hendon considered the beginning of Sir Dock on the south side of the Wear in William Halcrow & Partners Ltd. Sunderland. Meik was responsible for the entire works. Having completed Scotland and the north east were the dock and the design and packed with brawn and brainpower, a construction of both a grain warehouse combination that would spawn such

125

excellence in both inventions and industry that the repercussions would be felt in the most remote areas of the world. Both regions were loaded with mineral wealth and it was thanks to the Victorian civil engineers who built ports and railways that the export and exploitation of such resources were made possible.

--[:

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thereabouts Stephenson had the idea of attaching a locomotive to the wagons, the Railway Age burgeoned in the north. The gleaming green livery of the North Eastern Railway (NER) was soon a familiar sight, charging across the Midlands down to London and quickly engulfing smaller railway lines which had valiantly attempted to operate as independent concerns.

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The ball had started rolling two centuries before in 1609 when a wagonway was created to carry coal from Bedlington to the River Blyth. Once the neighbouring mine owners could see the efficiency of running wagons on rails, they rapidly took up the idea. By the end of the 18th century, an extensive network of lines existed and, when in 1813 or

Building the north east's railways was a tough challenge. First, an influential committee had to be assembled and it in turn appointed a surveyor to give an estimate of cost. The finance had to be raised and a Bill piloted through Parliament - often in the face of fierce competition from other firms. (The Port Talbot Railway, constructed by the Meik brothers many years later, caused an estimated £27,370 to be spent on legal and parliamentary costs by the various companies fighting either for or against the scheme.)

Far left in 1829 Gearge Stephenson's latest locomotive, the Rocket, beat competitors by achieving a speed of 58km per hour. Below: the lost three cylinder type

locomotive built by the North Eastern Railway.

TENACIOUS

BREED

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Once Royal Assent had been obtained, there were countless pitfalls: navvies on strike would frequently wander off to a new site where pay was better, new bridges would collapse and supposedly 'easy' tunnels would be plagued with water and running sand. With the shareholders pestering the directors, the directors badgering the engineer and the engineer cajoling and pleading with the contractor to speed up, it was hardly plain sailing. Meik's first experience of such excitement came in 1871. By this time the north east's railway system was highly advanced. The pub at Seaham had its own station entrance and platform so that drunken customers could be dumped on the last train home. Meik's assignment was rather different. He was to design a freight link between

two pans of the NER. This was the Hilton, Southwick and Monkwearmouth Railway, which transported coal from collieries sited along the line and which was originally formed with the object of developing industry on the north bank of the Wear, west of Sunderland. The railway was a financial failure and the NER acquired the line for ÂŁ130,000. So began and ended Meik's railway career in the north east. Scotland was to prove a lucrative alternative.

It was golf which first lured the railway builders to the south east coast of Scotland, but tragedy that took them to the fishing communiry of Eyemouth near the

border. On 13 October 1883, 'Black Friday' as it is known, a tertible storm drowned 129 fishermen, leaving 107 widows and 351 fatherless children. The villagers were determined that their communiry would survive. Their sadly depleted crews still managed to bring in large catches, but a railway and improved port facilities were essential to their livelihood. To handle the proposition, a wildly unsuitable team was assembled, comprising a local bank agent "on the footing that no remuneration can at

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Thomas Meik took Montague Pollard足 Urquhart into the partnership in 1888. Although he collaborated on most of the Meiks' major projects until his retirement in 1909, there appear to be no records specifying Pollard-Urquhart's achievements. All that is known is that he met an untimely death by falling off his bicycle.

present be promised," a local contractor and a friend who would buy some shares in rhe venture. U nsurprisingly ir was nor until 1888 that work began with Thomas Meik's new partner, Montague Pollard足 Urquhart and Thomas Meik's son, Patrick, as the engineers in charge. The railway surpassed Eyemouth's expectations, its uses evolving to suit the times. By the late 1920s holidaymakers had replaced the transport of fish as the main source of income.

Photographs from Hafcrow's own albums

of the construction of railways and associated bridges.

Meik's three other ventures into Scotland's railways included an extension of the Forfar to Brechin line, where an unusual selection of individuals, such as the local boneworks' employees, would simply wander onto the line and operate switches at will. This practice caused at least one serious derailment. Less fraught were the Newburgh and North Fife Railway and the East Fife Central Railway. The former was promoted with a view to transforming the villages along the line into exclusive dormitory towns. This proved a failure and the company was later absorbed by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). The East Fife Central Railway, being a goods line, had no such aspirations and, despite its amalgamation into the North British in 18%, operated until its closure on 1 August 1964.

TENACIOUS

BREED

conservative with respect to 'innovations' whethet in the kitk or in the shipping trade," but Meik was to change traditional views by proving that progressive solutions could be the cheapest.

'Sunderland Harbour /864' by J W Carmichael.

As well as railways, Thomas Meik undertook harbour commissions. His work in Sunderland had gained him a reputation in that field and shortly after setting up his Edinburgh office, he was assigned three major commissions, the Ports of Ayr, Burntisland and Bo'ness. On describing works on Bo'ness, The Engineer remarked, "It will not be felt surprising that although decidedly liberal in politics, Scotland is Right: the railway station at Bo'ness with the harbour in the

background.

THE PORT OF SO'NESS. N.B.

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At Bo'ness the North British Railway Company happily financed improvements in machinery and organisation of the railway traffic. Meik predicted that his proposals would ultimately reduce the total cost of shipping coal to about one or one and a quarter old pence per tonne. This was considerably below the cost at any other port in Scotland and similar to the costs of the north of England ports. Burntisland was much more complex and, according to The Scotsman, had a "somewhat chequered history" with proposals and plans changing with the weather. The urgent need for a port was agreed by all, because the existing

125

facilities could not cope with the demands of the local coal industry. In 1870 the Town Council took action and commissioned a harbour from Thomas Meik on the condition that it cost ÂŁ60,000 and no more. By 1874 the worthies were worrying, amending the plans and questioning the designs. A deputation was appointed to visit ports in Scotland and England to determine the best arrangements for shipping coal. The council approved an innovative plan: their port would contain Scotland's first hydraulic hoist. All were enthusiastic, a Bill was pushed through Parliament and the dock was completed on budget.

F RTH

Peterhead to Port Henry at Stockton. The hiss of steam and the clank of metal that had been a constant background during his working life "The hiss ofsteam

In 1888, after twenty were to be replaced years' labour over by the genteel and the clank

ports and railways, sounds of suburban ofmetal had

Edinburgh. Meik Thomas Meik retired. He had appeared in died in 1896 aged been a constant

an 'expert' capacity 84. By then, the background. "

before many Royal indisputable Commissions and engineering talents and experience of parliamentary committees. His work was bolted for his sons, Patrick and Charles, made posterity onto Scotland and the north them natural heirs to Meik's flourishing east from Seaham to Silloth and from business and professional standing.

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HALCROW

(.I.u.r"lIEC"" THOMAS MEIK I. 50"1$

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At Ayr, Meik's insistence on the latest machinery and carefully designed rail accommodation, whereby "wagons were brought in upon a high level and having discharged run back along a low level, ensured a hitherto unknown efficiency."

NEW

ORTH.

YEARS

Meanwhile up at Sunderland Harbour, Meik's first major piece of work, the harbour engineers were facing an exasperating problem: young boys intrigued by the pandemonium of ships and trains would leap over the wall, run down to the dockside and cause havoc. In all probability, one of these boys was the young William Halcrow.

nun N TIS LAN J)

MEIK

NAME

Meik by Name

Thomas Meiks era was that ofthe First Industrial Age, dominated by the advent ofsteam and iron. The Second Industrial Age, which began in about 1880, is considered to be one ofsteel and electricity. These new resources transformed construction methods. Steel first made in quantity for railways, was chosen as the principal materialfor the 300m high Eiffel Tower, builtfor the Paris Exposition of1889. The Second Industrial Age coincided with the rise to fame ofMeiks sons. This was the mostpowerfulperiod ofthe British Empire, the pinnacle ofwhich is generally thought to have been in 1897, the DiamondJubilee ofQueen Victoria, who died in 1901 after a reign of64 years.

Although Patrick and Charles Meik had been nurtured on civil engineering from an early age, their father could hardly have foreseen the variety, drama and geographical extremes that their careers would encompass. The Railway Age had run out of steam

and in its place was a world trembling on the threshold of war. The fates dealt kindly with Parrick, who was blessed with charm, intelligence, business sense and, most importantly, the opportunities to use his skills. Charles was less fortunate. Patrick had worked for his father both at the River Wear Commission and also on the harbours at Burntisland and Bo'ness. For this he won a Telford Premium from the Institution of Civil Engineers for his paper on the works undertaken and in 1882 he had the great honour to be asked by Sir _~___ Benjamin Baker to act

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Scotland. For three years, whilst

continuing his interest in Thomas Meik, he supervised these works and, on completion of the foundations in 1885, he moved to London to start his own practice. After an equally auspicious start in the family firm, Charles' professional path took a turn for the worse when he was apprenticed to Thomas Bouch, an engineer at the peak of his fame as a designer of bridges and railways. Since 1849, Bouch had been proposing the construction of bridges across two Scottish rivers, the Tay and the Forth, but financial backing was not forthcoming until the 1870s, when he was finally commissioned to design the Tay Bridge. "It is a very ordinary undertaking," he commented and claimed that he knew the river better rhan he knew his own garden. Charles Meik was to assist him on the design.

The bridge was officially opened on companion in consternation and cried, 31 May 1878 and immediately started "There is something wrong with the to prove its worth. Its 85 spans of train!" A moment later the 13 high wrought iron lattice girders carried girders forming the central part of the 840/0 of Dundee-Edinburgh ttaffic, bridge and 12 cast iron piers crashed including for the first into the river time on Friday, 20 carrying the train (~ railway worker June 1879, the royal and 75 men, women coach travelling from and children with it. in the signal Balmoral to Windsor. cabin by the bridge Thomas Bouch was A Court ofInquiry on the platform to was immediately set cried, 'There is receive Queen Victoria up. Bouch's career something wrong and the following was finished. His Thursday he was work on the Forth with the train!'" knighted. He was Bridge was invited to start work terminated and his on his other pet project, the Forth Bridge. proposals revised by Patrick Meik's employers, Fowler and Baker. "The On the evening of 28 December 1879, conclusion then to which we have a terrible gale screeched down the T ay come is that this bridge was badly Valley; a railway worker in the signal designed, badly constructed and badly cabin by the bridge turned to his maintained ... Sir Thomas Bouch is in

Above: the Tay Bridge disaster, December /879.

our opinion mainly to blame ...." Charles Meik merely left an impression that he "was aptly named."

MEIK

NAME

View from the bridge at Margam Maar Junction, south Wales.

Rather than stay in Britain, Charles Meik went to Japan and worked as a port designer for the Japanese Government. This was not as peculiar as it appears; since the restoration of the Japanese Emperor in 1868, Japan had embarked on a course of action which would bring her, within a remarkably short time, to the status of world power. A prime element of this programme was to borrow and learn technical knowledge from overseas, "which begs the tantalizing question, what would have happened in Japan if the foreigners had stayed at home?" (Checkland).

Charles Meik was well suited to this new life, as he found that Japan's maritime conditions bore striking similarities to Britain's eastern seaboard. More importantly, he was fascinated by the Japanese way of life and wrote both technical and travel articles describing his experiences. In 1894, he returned to Britain to work in London with his brother and two years later the firm changed its name to PW Meik and CS Meik. Charles assisted Patrick on the firm's first venture into Wales, a massive commission to construct docks and a railway at Port Talbot. Pontrhyd-y-fen Viadua, South Wales Mineral Junaion Railway, one of the three Port Talbot Railway schemes.

125

of a century had fought up and down the narrow valleys in a welter of competing projects, lawsuits, rate wars, complex junctions and even more complicated running powers." (DSM Barrie).

By the 1890s, the tailway culture was firmly embedded in the soul of sourh Wales. "The heart and core of these railways was in the valleys where at least two railways competed for living space amid a muddle of winding shafts, colliery ti ps and terraced streets stretching up the mountainside .... Down into these valleys came the mountain sheep and down the valleys came the coal trains." (DSM Barrie). Prior to the reconstruction of the Porr Talbot docks, millions of tonnes of coal were transported annually to various other ports, the principal ones being Cardiff and Swansea. Both of these were nearly 48km from some of the richest seams, whereas the site at Port Talbot was on average only 21km away.

Miss Talbot was not for turning. Her scheme, in which she was assisted by the Meiks, involved a port and a railway which, besides serving the existing pits, would tap fresh ground in which there were more than one billion tonnes of undeveloped coal. Within four years of its incorporation, the Port Talbot Railway had a 54km railway system at its disposal. The new dock had an area of9ha and could provide facilities for shipping five million tonnes per annum. "One requires no great gift of prophecy to foretell a brilliant future," wrote an observer in 1899 and Port Talbot was soon hailed as a frontrunner in the seaports of the world. By 1900, trade had risen to over 500,000 tonnes in coal export, to over two million tonnes in 1916 and total trade to a peak of more than three million tonnes in 1923.

The dock at Port To/bot

A less tenacious individual than Miss Talbot would have quailed at the thought of entering the Welsh rail arena. ''There lingered ... a sturdily independent array of local railway companies which for the greater part

YEARS

HALCRQW

MEIK

NAME

Above: the 6th Morquess of Londonderry. Below: contemporory photogrophs of Seaham

Another extraordinary character, the Marquess of Londonderry, was the power behind a further Meik brothers' project. Without the Londonderrys, the industrial town of Seaham on the north east coast would nor have existed. They owned the local coalfields, developed the local railway and created jobs by opening factories, but found a major stumbling block with their harbour. The Port of Seaham occupied only 1.6ha and could nor cope wirh the rwo million tonnes of coal that the Londonderry mines could yield each year.

A portrait of the official opening of Seaham

Harbour in /905.

Harbour construction.

The undertaking to transform the lO-year-old dock was formidable, especially when trying to reclaim the necessary land with little or no protection from the North Sea. The site was eventually deepened by 4m using steam navvies and blasting. The 11 m high walls of the new dock, officially opened in 1905, were constructed of concrete faced with masonry above water level. In the same year, the Meiks embarked on the reconstruction of a pier at Pozzuoli

in Italy; at that time the use of reinforced concrete in maritime works was innovative. Although the London offices remained small with only a handful of professional staff, the Meiks' range of skills was formidable. They adapted their port and railway designs to suit conditions across the British Empire from the uninhabited Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, where they built a railway for the Phosphate Company, through to ports in India, Burma and Mozambique.

125

The Meiks' innovative abilities found an outlet in anothet unexpected region, the Scottish Highlands, beloved by the Victorians for country pursuits. Progress had bypassed the area but scientific discoveries in France and the USA triggered an end to this glorious isolation. In 1886, a process was discovered for the electrolytic reduction of alumina to pure metal, aluminium. By contemporary standards this was a breakthrough as aluminium was considered more precious than silver, partly owing to irs rarity value but also because of its lightness. When the King of Siam visi ted Paris in 1855, the Emperor Napoleon III had given him a watch chain made of aluminium as a token of his great esteem.

'Monarch

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of the Glen'

by Sir Edwin Landseer

typifies the Viaorians' glorification

was chosen because the energy needed to run the factory could be generated by harnessing the waterfalls for cheap hydroelectric power and alumina could be shipped in through the Caledonian Canal. By 1896, the works was up and running but it appeared that BACO had a disaster on its hands. Manufacturers were slow to use aluminium and even the British military and

In a rush of enthusiasm for the discovery, the British Aluminium Company (BACO), now known as British

of wildlife.

applications. "An undertaking which has worked such havoc around the falls of Foyers is not deserving of sympathy," commented the Investor's Review in 1899. Undeterred and sensing a change of fortune, BACO embarked on a new, more ambitious scheme at Kinlochleven, designed by the Meiks.

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Even by today's standards, Kinlochleven is spectacular. Seventy-five years after its completion, most of the original installations are still operational. The scheme involved the construction of a dam over 914m long and 27m high. It is still the longest in the Highlands. It was built at an elevation of over 305m in rugged and inaccessible terrain, necessitating nearly 6km of concrete aqueduct and nearly 13km of steel pipe. The cost in human terms, however, was heartbreaking. Kinlochleven owes its place in the histoty books not so much to its considerable technical merits, but to its status as the last major creation of the traditional navvy whose activities in the construction of canals and railways left an indelible mark on the British countryside. Accounts of the plight of these men factory in the kingdom. All that we overshadow what little was written knew was that we had gutted whole about the resident engineer and his mountains and hills in the operation." young chief assistant, William Halcrow, who lived in godlike isolation from Kinlochleven was to prove an their tormented workforce. The invaluable asset in the two world wars navvies lived in squalid huts that followed. undertaking dangerous, exhausting work by day and night. There were In 1910, Patrick Meik died. He was hideous acciden ts, mourned as "an able often the result of and accomplished "The navvies careless use of engineer" whose explosives. One of "kindness of heart lived in squalid the navvies, Patrick and social qualities huts undertaking McGill, described endeared him ro a two members of his large circle of dangerous, gang as "worn and friends." In the exhausting work dishevelled, their same year, William clothes ... torn to Halcrow left the by day and night. " ribbons, their cheeks firm, then named ... covered with clay CS Meik, to gain and blood and their hair and beards contracting experience overseas. looked like mops which had been used While he was sweltering in the heat in sweeping. Only when we had of a tropical sun, metaphorical storm completed the job ... did we learn that clouds were gathering over Europe. we had been employed on the construction of the biggest aluminium Before 1914, around 80% of the world's aluminium came from Germany. The Great War not only Left: views of J(jnlochleven.

cut off supplies, it created vast new markets. Responding to this need, BACO invited Charles Meik to design and supervise the construction of a record-breaking new project which called for a 24km long tunnel ro be driven through the granite mountains. It would be known as the Lochaber Water Power Scheme. Charles Meik went to work with a will only to die in 1923 before construction started. Time had restored his reputation. "Mr Meik was an engineer of great ability and to know him was to know a very close friend," commented BACO's director, Mr W Murray Morrison.

THE

GARDEN

EDEN

The Garden of Eden

In November 1914, an Anglo-Indian expeditionary force invaded

Mesopotamia, the "land between the two rivers, " the Tigris and the

Euphrates andpart ofthe Ottoman Empire (1534-1917).

Basra was occupied. General Charles Townshend seized Kut al-Amarah

in 1915. After a siege, Townshend was forced to surrender to the Turks in

Apri11916. However, the British took possession ofBaghdad in

March 1917, conquering the area with Arab support.

The armistice was signed in October 1918, the Ottoman Empire having

been dismantled by the victorious powers.

During the First World war (1914-1918), the ingenuity ofBritish

engineers was put to the test in all manner ofpreparations and equipment

for battles fought in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Sir George Buchanan's album

of Rangoon.

By the late 1920s, the one well足 furnished office to be found off the spartan corridors of Victoria Street was rarely occupied. Looking through the doorway one could see ordered displays of books, mementoes and pictures. The room was an unwitting museum of one man's extraordinary achievements, but he rarely appeared.

Shunned by the British engineering profession, banished from the Institution of Civil Engineers yet adulated abroad, Sir George Buchanan was ultimately rejected by his own firm. Buchanan had worked with Patrick Meiksince 1905 when they collaborated on designs for the Rangoon River Training Works in Burma. Meik was the consulting engineer and Buchanan was chief engineer. It was a highly successful if lengthy undertaking owing to primitive construction methods. The works consisted of a training wall constructed of rubble deposited from barges on a foundation of brushwood mattresses 3048m long by 70m wide. A 121ha area behind the wall was to be reclaimed.

125

I called at the India Office at once and offered my services in any capacity but was told that all Indian Officials must return to India as soon as possible and carry on with their respective duties."

"In]une 1914", George Buchanan recounts, "I was at home on leave from Burma. A particularly gay London season was in full swing and politically there did not appear to be a cloud in rhe sky. We were all peacefully enjoying ourselves when on 4th Augusr came rhe news rhar England had declared war againsr Germany. Ie was a sraggering blow.

As Buchanan irched wirh frusrration in Rangoon, Brirish forces marched in Mesoporamia, the supposed sire of rhe Garden of Eden and now part ofIraq. "Modern historians appear to agree rhat most of World War I was waged

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HALCROW

Wharves at Rangoon.

in a muddled fashion, and the 'picnic' in Mesopotamia was probably the biggest muddle of all ... rhe army sraggered from blunder to blunder," wrires military historian, A] Barker. The British wanted to prorecr rhe area's oil for their own use. German arms and ammunirion were pouring into its ally, Turkey, and alrhough Turkey was not yet at war with Brirain, the government was concerned thar any major war with Turkey would inflame Muslim opinion in India. A beacon at the end of a training wall, Rangoon.

THE

GARDEN

OF EDEN

Right Indian troops wearing lifebelts abaard a transporter passing through the Gulf en route to India.

When His Majesty's forces alighted at Basra, there were 20,000 men, 7000 animals and supplies and nowhere to pitch camp. The only place where the ocean-going vessels could anchor was too far out to be reached by jetty. Commander Hamilton, the senior marine officer at Basra, wrote to George Buchanan, then chairman and chief engineer to the Rangoon Port Trust, for his urgent advice on how to improve the channels for shipping. Buchanan offered to go out and help. The general in charge said that he did not think "the time has yet come to take up the permanent improvement of the waterways," but this decision was overruled by the Indian Government which was organising the campaign on behalf of Britain. Buchanan was on his way. More mementoes from the Rangoon period.

"I who had never worn a military uniform in my life, discarded with trembling hands my civilian garments and sallied forth from my hotel in khaki. I managed to comport myself

with sufficient dignity and to return salutes with sufficient solemnity to conceal my incompetence as a soldier." "I concentrated on the base and prepared a layout for the new port at Mu'qil. A series of disasters now occurred which entirely upset my programme. My engineers and surveyors were waiting in Basra for the survey equipment. A steamer arrived with all our gear packed at the bottom of the hold, but when for the first time we were able to get hold of the cases, the steamer gaily sailed back to Bombay leaving most of our gear in the hold. My light paddle steamer for the survey ... arrived stripped of all her fittings .... " "We had to scour all India for men accustomed to port work. One of my constant worries was in connection with my own water transport equipment. I had been told that I must make my own arrangements for the supply of launches and other river craft and this I had done but as soon as they arrived at Basra they were

125

YEARS

HALCROW

commandeered on the grounds of urgent military requirements. The result was that frequently the whole work of the port was brought to a standstill because harbour masters, pilots and traffic superintendents were unable to get off to ships lying in the stream clamouring for their services. The delays were so serious, I was constrained to ask whether my staff were expected to swim to the ships in order to carry our their duties and whether it was in order for the staff of the harbour master's office to starve as had happened on several occasions because there was no launch available to take down their rations."

"In]une 1916 before my directorate began to function, the total tonnage was 40,503. The daily discharge in tonnes was 1350 and the average days in port per ship, 14, which although an improvement, still left much to be Finally Buchanan received the backing desired. The better result was due to he needed and his designs were the employment of trained shipping accepted and implemented. The port experts and the provision of suitable wharves. The Army comprised a line of wharves 853m long Commander was had to scour (later extended to good enough to 1219m) equipped recognise the work all India for with cranes, sheds, done and in a men accustomed roads and railway memorandum he wrote lines. There were 'the figures to port work . " also five floating quoted in your final pontoon landings report ... afford for river steamers. "The wharves were eloquent testimony to the results which have been achieved.''' built of teak wood imported from Burma at nearly double the cost it should have been but as it was at that time the easiest material available and imperishable in water, we had no option in the marter."

Photographs

of life in

Basra from the albums

of Sir George Buchanon.

"we

But the project was still fraught with difficulties. "On one occasion a ship arrived loaded with heavy railway material and plant and knowing that we had no crane at Basra, the authorities thoughtfully sent with the cargo a derrick crane, but the crane was loaded at the bottom of the ship with the heavy material on top. She had to be returned to Bombay to be unloaded and reloaded."

ThiS map. from the turn of the century. shows the difficult lOgiStICS of transportmg troops and supplies from Bombay to Basra.

On 1 January 1917 Buchanan was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and shortly afrer became "Sir George". In post-war Britain, a land filled with heroes, Buchanan managed to stand out as a brilliant individual. Charles Meik must have been delighted to secure him as his partner in 1920. With their combined skills in marine engineering, railways and hydros, they were a formidable pair. The ingots and coins from Lochaber and Kinloch/even provide nove/ souvenirs of the two

schemes.

While Buchanan pursued his fame and fortune overseas, Charles was working tirelessly at home on the Lochaber Hydroelectric Power Scheme. In 1921, only after many years of study and

The massive undertaking at Lochaber and the men who built it (inset).

debate did Parliament sanction this ambitious project to build a new aluminium factory with its own hydroelectric installation, harnessing the power of the headwaters of the Rivers Treig and Spean and the floodwaters of the River Spey. In 1930 The Engineer described the scheme as "an engineering work of outstanding merit" which at its peak of construction employed 3000 men. The main tunnel, 5m in diameter for 24km, was driven through the massif centred on Ben Nevis and was ranked

125

Pipe 6 9J2Auto: Throttle Anchorage Value

the longest water-carrying tunnel in such a large scale that it precluded any the world, until the firm's later experiment on a small area because of project, the Orange-Fish Tunnel in the cost of plant required. A 6k.m sea South Africa in the 1970s. Essential wall was to be built to enclose an area storage was provided by the of 464ha which would then be filled construction of the Laggan Dam, with 19 million cubic metres of 213m long and SSm material dredged high, on the River from the harbour. «The main tunnel Spean. From this The costs of the reservoir, the water scheme, as approved was ranked the longest was conveyed by by Sir George water-carrying tunnel to another amongst others, reservoir above the escalated out of all tunnel in the world. " T reig Dam and then

proportion. to the power house,

Originally the which had a capacity of 72MW.

reclamation was to be completed in five years at a cost of nearly After Charles Meik.'s death in 1923,

£3 million, but later forecasts pointed the realisation of his brilliant and

to costs of over £8 million and another carefully elaborated plans for Lochaber 20 years before completion. fell to William Halcrow, whose eagle

eye ensured an excellent execution.

Sadly, Meik's death signalled the

demise of the powerful duo; Buchanan's

fate was to suffer professionally.

The Buchanan saga began in 1919,

when in the light of his work at Basra,

he was invited out to Bombay to

investigate the possibility of a

reclamation scheme for housing, on

The Laggan Dam and (inset) the Spey Dam, both part of the Lochaber Hydroelectric Scheme.

YEARS

HALCROW

g'lDia: Drah

THE GARDEN

EDEN

As the Bombay scheme grew The establishment that had lauded him increasingly out of hand, more now ignored him and he buried his problems arose, when Sir George wrote unhappiness in strenuous overseas visits a letter to the South African High that would have killed a lesser man. Commissioner in which he supposedly "criticised and condemned the In 1926, a committee was set up to enquire into the miscalculations at proposals of another engineer and had Bombay. William Halcrow, who had offered his services uninvited." been a parmer of the (From minutes of the firm since 1922, was ICE Professional ÂŤNature took grilled tirelessly but Committee). He was he refused to expelled from the pity on the people Institution and his implicate his ofBombay who so British career was at colleague. There is an end. His forthÂ a strong case that desperately needed Buchanan was not right manner had the land." to blame. While the brought him many committee wasted enemies within the hours arguing, profession and Sir nature took piry on the people of George, in the light of his very cordial relations with the South African Bombay who so desperately needed Government, believed he had been the land. A large natural deposit of framed. silt appeared in the reclamation area. "If it continues (it) may relieve the Government of Bombay of a little of its anxiery as to the future of the scheme," commented The Times.

THE INSTITUTION OF

CIVIL ENGINEERS

William Halcrow's priority was the business, not one unfortunate individual. The name Buchanan was deleted from the letterhead and the firm became known as CS Meik and Halcrow.

Happily the connection with the firm was not entirely severed, as Paul Buchanan, an economist with Halcrow Fox and Associates, is a great great nephew of Sir George. Moreover, Sir Colin Buchanan, Sir George's nephew and Paul's grandfather, is a renowned pioneer in the world of transport planning.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HALCROW GROUP

1868 Thomas Meik 1894 Thomas Meik and Sons 1896 PW and CS Meik 1909 CS Meik 1920 CS Meik and Buchanan 1923 CS Meik and Halcrow 1941 WT Halcrow and Partners 1944 Sir William Halcrow

and Partners

1986 Sir William Halcrow

and Partners Ltd

125

YEARS

I-IALCROW

The Civils' War

Fascism arose as a powerfulpoliticalforce during the 1920s in Italy

under Mussolini, then in Germany in the 1930s, when Hitler became

Chancellor. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Britain declared

war and so World war II began. Hitler, allied with Italy and

later Japan, challenged the rest ofthe world.

The war ended in Europe in May 1945 and later that year Japan

surrendered when the USA dropped the atom bomb on two ofits major

cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war effort left Britain

devastated economically and the USA and the Soviet Union as

the major politicalforces.

Britain's "finest hour" was also William Halcrow's. His wartime success is legendary, springing from his appointment to the London Passenger Transport Board in 1927 as joint consulting engineer with the elderly incumbent, Sir Harley Dalrymple Hay. This move gave him an expert's knowledge of London's underground city. World War II was looming on the horizon and the prospect of attacks on London persuaded a number of organisations to turn their attention to the potential beneath the pavements.

A newspaper seller on the Embankment in

London, 3 September /939.

The General Post Office (GPO) was among the first to sniff the thunder in the air. With guidance from Dalrymple Hay, it had already built an underground railway to distribute post to the main sorting offices. The line

had opened in time for Christmas 1927 and within the year had replaced 25% of London's mail vans. London Underground's first step was to make its system secure. William Halcrow's partner, Horace Morgan, who had worked with him on Lochaber, described the scheme in his paper on the "Protection against Flooding of the London Underground System" in 1948.

, I

THE

CIVILS'

WAR

end of a redundant loop under the river, saved the line from disaster. This feat earned him the nickname of Noah, "as he had saved London from the Great Flood."

The noodgotes, used in emergencies during World Wor /I to protect London's underground railways, weighed six tonnes and could be operated by hand,

"In the event of a breach in an under足 river tunnel, the Bakerloo Line would be flooded as far north as Baker Street Station and the Cenrral Line between Wood Lane and Liverpool Street. In addition, water might reach the underground railways via the interchange stations such as Charing Cross and South Kensington." (Howie and Chrimes, 'Thames Tunnel to Channel TunneL'). Floodgates were therefore installed at strategic stations. They were made of a solid sheet of armour plated steel.

Ludgate Circus, London at dawn after a night of air raids, II May 1941.

Those scientists who pooh-poohed the possibility of such a breach were shown their folly when shortly after the starr of the war, a bomb fell on a disused railway tunnel that passed under the Thames south of Charing Cross. Only huge concrete plugs, built on William Halcrow's recommendation at either

Underground stations were locked up to stop people taking refuge there and shelters were commissioned from the firm to house "essential personnel". Those responsible for wartime planning initially decided that "deep level shelters would be counter足 productive as the terrified citizens would refuse to leave them to

125

YEARS

HALCROW

The Eisenhower Centre, neor Goodge Street, London.

continue their everyday tasks. The ordinary people were therefore left to cower in Anderson shelters, dangerous cellars or church crypts whilsr the 'Very Important People' were provided at the taxpayers' expense with relative comfort and safety." (Pennick).

In the face of civil disobedience, the government was compelled to make "going underground" legal for all. Eight new shelters were built attached to existing stations such as Goodge Street and Camden Town. The stations were chosen on a route that would make it possible to connect them up as a new railway when the war was over. Goodge Street, which was designed by William Halcrow, was possibly the most important of all as it was from there that Eisenhower directed the D-Day landings in 1944.

During the Normandy landings, Goodge Street was the signals centre linked by land lines to operational units. Switching was carried out underground and connections made with the Post Office tunnel system.

A detail of Women in o Shelter f 94/' by

Henry Moore.

Most people's memories and visions of the underground during World War II are based on descriptions such as Henry Moore's. "One evening after dinner ... we returned home by underground taking the Northern Line to Belsize Patk. As a rule, I went into town by car and I hadn't been by tube for ages. For the first time that evening I saw people lying on the platforms at all the stations we stopped at ... I had never seen so many reclining figures ... and amid the grim tension, I noticed groups of strangers formed together in intimate groups and children asleep within feet of the passing train." (Trench and Hillman, 'London under London').

12'

YEARS

IIAI.CROW

gallery's scientific adviser, Rawlins, and his consulting engineer, William Halcrow, alighted on the Manod Quarry. The preparatory works undertaken by Halcrow remain couched in mystery. Suffice it to say that, despite minor panics about the safety of the slatey ceilings, the old masters passed the war in a haven of cool, dark air. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the English countryside, Halcrow's non-tunnelling engineers were extremely busy. The 1930s had been a time of deep Halcrow's London office, with around depression with little on the drawing board. Engineers would come into 15 staff, was turned over to "tunnel the office every day hoping for work, work only" to cope with the capital's for which they subterranean would be paid at an requirements. The "Concern mounted hourly rate. If there engineers led an was no work, they extreme existence, that stray bombs their days devoted to went home. War might land on the changed all that. their underground T unnellers excepted, kingdom, their nights buildings housing anyone who was spent firewatching the pictures. " able suddenly found on the roof of the himself swept out to Victoria Street offices. Beaconsfield and to One or two senior an unobtrusive office hidden upstairs staff had the distressing honour of in an estate agent's premises. being on call should a bomb drop on an underground shelter, a regular wartime event. Dury forced them to witness the tragedies of families caught up in burst water mains, sewage and collapsed masonry.

FIR E WATCHER

Over in Wales, other underground activities were underway in what was hoped would be an unlikely target, a subterranean slate quarry. The National Gallery was desperate to find safe, temperate storage for its treasures. It had already spread its collection around a number of locations but when raids started on Liverpool, concern mounted that stray bombs might land on the buildings housing the pictures. Britain was scoured for a suitable resting place .and finally the

"My siSler

, I

li'flJ' me I!IO( 11/0,1"1 of

Art treasures being carried underground

for protection.

Superhuman efforts were expected and somehow materialised. Former senior partner, Noel Cochrane remembers a colleague who almost single-handedly designed the entire reinforced concrete for the Mulberry Harbour caissons, as well as the precast concrete decks for deep water military pons in Scotland.

fhe SIll!! /lOW ill till' Naliollol Callay C(IlIIe .li"olll a cal'e ill Wall,s.'"

THE

CIVILS'

WAR

The two harbours, Arromanches and St Laurent, were built to withstand force 6 winds, then towed to and ereaed on the northern coast of France.

Shortly after D-Day, the worst storm for 40 years hit the Channel and destroyed St Laurent, located I Ikm west of Arromanches, The latter was left unscathed.

Mulberry was a vast pre-fabricated porr built in Britain and wwed in sections across the Channel w the French coast (0 be created as two great harbours with breakwaters, Arromanches and Sr. Laurent, thus solving the gigantic problem of how (0 supply the Allied armies in France after D-Day. It was undoubtedly the largest wwage operation in hiswry and it moved King George VI (0 remark, "This was the greatest combined operation the world has ever seen, perhaps the greatest it will ever see." For the harbour nearly 600,000 (Onnes of concrete, 31,000 ronnes of steel and over one million square metres of shuttering were used. The construction of the caissons for the initial breakwater called for 20,000 men working round the clock. The caissons or 'Phoenixes' designed at Beaconsfield were essentially breakwater units and gun platforms and were made in six different sizes (0 suit various depths of water and srorm waves, the largest having a

displacement of over 6000 (Onnes. Each contained rudimentary shelter space for crews for use during the long tow ro France. Another high-profile project was the development of the bouncing bomb. "Bouncing bombs weren't rotally novel", recalls Noel Cochrane. "Since the old days of naval gunnery you had muzzle loaders with one shot, but it was never known why some cannon balls would skitter across the water

and others would simply go plop. I think it was discovered almost by accident that if you could make a ball rotate forward it would plop, but if you made it rotate backwards it would bounce and if a round bomb was dropped from low level at i particular angle, it would bounce quite some way,"

OIEPPE

•

Cf-IERBOURG

D2{"UV I LLt:, ARROMANCHES

•

BAYEUX

SI LO

COUTANCES.~

• C.l(EN

(

•

L1SIEUX

•

LOUVlc-RS·

•

BERNP>--Y

EVRE.U

•

12'

Having read William Halcrow's 1939 paper on the structure of the Mohne Dam, Barnes Wallis worked closely with the firm to ensure his invention was sufficiently destructive. A dam in Wales was blown up to test the validity of his ideas before the 'Dam Busters' reached for the enemy skies. When news of Squadron 617's raid on Germany broke, the BBC, searching for an 'expert' who could explain to listeners precisely what had happened, randomly picked William Halcrow. Even for such a quick-wined man, it was extremely difficult to give an 'objective' opinion without revealing his involvement. Although the operation was a success, one of the aircraft came down more or less intact on the reservoir floor with its bomb still on board and there were concerns that the Germans could replicate it and would reciprocate. "I was preoccupied for several months searching for vulnerable British dams and creating schemes to prevent enemy aircraft from flying down our reservoir valleys and bombing those dams," says Noel Cochrane. "We used very tall aerial masts 99m high on either side of the reservoir close to the

dam and we strung a mine cable between them. At first it was thought that some sort of explosive would hang from the cable, but we substituted this with big blocks of concrete, as that would be enough to frighten them off. Being on steep hill sides, each mast had to cater for 14 separate loads of different elasticities in different places. I had the help only of two young Chinese refugee engineers with very little English between them."

YEARS

6/7 Squadron. July 1943: (right ta left) Squadran Leader HB 'MlCkey' Martin, Flight lieutenant DJH Maltby who was later killed In the (lrst ottack on the Dortmund足 Ems and a third member

of the squadron.

IIALCROW

TilE

CIVIIS'

WAR

Below: secrecy wos the watchword for all Halcrow staff during the war years 1939-1945.

Ports were also on rhe Beaconsfield agenda. Major schemes in rhe middle of Scotland were complered in readiness for American troops arriving on the Queen Mary and other great liners with their heavy equipment. These precast wharves were supported on the largest screw piles ever handled, some with two or three screws to take loads of many hundreds of tonnes each. Six sheet-piled military harbours were designed for the Corps of Royal Engineers to erect in the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. Through these harbours, supplies for troops in Egypt and Cyrenaica, Libya, were imported. At the time the locations were secret and known simply as 'ZA, ZB, ze etc, although later it was learned that one was Aqaba, the Jordanian Port beloved as a backdrop by television reporters of the 1990/1991 Gulf War. World War II proved a showcase for William Halcrow's remarkable talents and he was rewarded with a knighthood in 1944 and the Presidency of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a member of the War Cabinet's engineering advisory commirree. He was consultant to the Secretary of State for War on ports and was adviser to the Bomber Command. Another wartime task of great responsibility was his position as chairman of a group of consulting engineers who were responsible for the design and construction of ordnance factories for the Ministry of Supply and storage

CAQUÂŁ.SS T/~K

COSTS LIVâ&#x201A;Ź's

Plaque to commemorate Sir William Halcrow's presidency of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

depots for the War Office. As The Engineer put it, "his career was unusually brilliant and energetic." He never saw it that way. He regarded the war years as a team effort that eclipsed the importance of individuals and brought competing firms together. As he put it, "I was simply one of the amiable mafia of consulting engineers."

125

YEARS

HALCROW

The Hydro Boys

"vote on behalfofthe men who won the victory for you. lOu failed to do so

in 1918 ... the landfit for heroes did not come into existence ... do your duty

and VOTE." Daily Mirror, 5 july 1945. The British did their duty,

as perceived by the Daily Mirror, and elected a Labour Government which

set about creating the Welfare State, aimed at providing every individual with

health care, education, housing and general amenities, against a backcloth

ofeconomic depression and ration books.

While there was much demanding work to be done in post-raid regeneration

ofthe major cities, new hydropower schemes north ofthe border presented

civil engineers with another great challenge.

most of the firm's talent. Work had continued throughout the war as the need for aluminium had never been greater. Unfortunarely, labour was hard to find and progress was slow. "The First Tunnelling Company of the Canadian Engineets had been brought in ... they loved driving tunnels with explosives, which is not really the way to do things," recalls Edgar Wilson, former partner.

Sir William Halcrow photographed at leisure. 21 August 1951.

'Turn west into any glen between Loch Lochy and the northern end of Loch Ness and you will find yourself in the catchment area of a Halcrow足 designed hydro project." (Anon). After 1945, the Scottish hydro schemes which had so enthralled Charles Meik and subsequently William Halcrow were employing

However, the focus of hydroelectric developments began to shift from the production of aluminium to the nation's need to generate power. The newly knighted Sir William Halcrow and politicians such as Lord Airlie and Tom McColl devoted themselves to the cause of the hydro. They believed that a comprehensive electricity supply system would

For these men, the hydros represented legendary design and site experience on a huge scale over two decades, whilst leaving intact the spectacular panoramas of the land. In environmental terms, the schemes were well ahead of their time and a clear demonstration that massive engineering projects and sensitivity to the surrounding area are a workable combination.

The front cover of the promotional booklet on Glen Affric, produced circa 1952, shows the Fasnakyle Power Station.

remedy the ills of Scottish Highlanders whose only means of survival was to eke out a precarious living from the land. Those who had left their homes to fight in the war now knew that life

Mullardoch Dam, part of the Glen Affric project

For the biggest scheme, Glen Affric, which started on site in 1947, careful planning succeeded in preserving the area's natural beauty and preventing catastrophic flooding which had been a periodic scourge. Environmental safeguards were applied in the extreme. In the outside the Highlands could be final tally, some believe that the area's infinitely more comfortable and salmon cost ÂŁ150 or more each to profitable. "You cannot expect the preserve. "You will meet an honest people of Inverness to live forever on the Loch Ness Monster," Parliament fellow who tells you that ... the glen has never looked so was told by an angry lovely, or the fishing Frederick Maquisten. "The work of

has improved "You must find work beyond belief ... And for these people." the (Hydro Boys'

when the sun shines Wirhout a ready was varied,

on the many lochs, supply of power, it large and small that was impossible for exciting, complex

stud the coloured industry to flourish. landscape, they glow and dangerous. "

with an unbelievable The search was on to blue that shames to find young engineers paleness the blue of the sky above." who would be worthy of the mammoth tasks ahead. Despite the tough working conditions, there was a whiff of glamour attached to the "Hydro Boys." Their work was varied, exciting, complex and dangerous. Small wonder that for years thereafter a stint on the hydros was regarded in Halcrow as a prerequisite to acceding to the partnership. Many went on to great professional success, joining the ranks of Britain's leading post-war engineers.

(Duncan Kennedy, 'BlackwelL's Magazine') .

125

YEARS

HALCROW

NORTH OF SCOTLAND HYDRO ELECTRIC BOARD.

Glen Affric, which included the impressive Mullardoch Dam, was quickly followed by Garry and Moriston, situated in adjacent glens.

THE GARRY & MORIS TON SCHEMES

"I started on the construction of Invergarry in 1951," recalls former associate, Bob Sinclair. "I was supervisor for a hard rock tunnel, nearly 5km long. With the folly of youth, we'd get as near to the face as we could when we fired the explosives. If the charge didn't go off correctly, ... we would have to wait for 20 minutes for the chemical reaction. Then someone would have to go and disconnect the charge, knowing that at any instant, he might be up there at the Pearly Gates .... "

The Garry and Mariston schemes included the first significant underground power station in the UK.

The sheer scale of the projects stretched engineering creativiry to the full: a rockfill dam at Quoich with an articulated upstream concrete membrane was the first of its kind in Great Britain, as was Ceannacroc, one of Glen Moriston's three underground power stations. Largely completed in 1957, the total cost of Garry and Moriston was over ÂŁ15 million.

THE

HYDRO

BOY~

Left: Deanie Power Station. Below: Strathfarrar Dam (top) and Manor Dam (bottom).

Despite the triumphant results, these schemes wete difficult to build and no less so the third, Strathfarrar and Kilmorack, as former chairman, Ron Baxter remembers. "With all underground work you can expect the unexpected. With Deanie Power Station, the rock had been explored by core boring and trial adits and was considered suitable. The rock The Monar Dam, parr of the same scheme, was the first double curvature was massive schist with widely spaced joints. The contractor's method was arch dam in the UK, chosen largely on to go in at roof level and to excavate economic grounds because materials were in such shorr using hand drilling and mucking out and supply. Halfway "The first double then gradually lower through the construction, an the chamber. We curvature arch were about three astute engineer dam in the UK" discovered a quarters of the way lamprophyre dyke. through the job when a large piece of Work was stopped, geological data reassessed and rock fell out of the roof and killed a foundations strengthened as a 'belt man. We had to find a new method to finish the job. The contractor and braces' precaution. decided to rebuild an access at the top "The interesting feature was that we of the chamber and put in steel ribs. would have been less worried by our They would then work forwards continually under the protection of discovery of the dyke if, a shorr time before, a well known arch dam in the steel ribs. It took the best parr of France had not failed. Until then a year to get back to where we had been but there were no more major there was no known failure of this accidents." rype of dam."

By the early 1960s it became apparent in the north of Scotland that the wider aims of the hydro construction had not been realised. There was no great influx of industry and the economy remained depressed. Similarly, outward migration was still a problem. Nevertheless, the firm had created a generating and distribution system that had brought electric power to the great majoriry of people and had made the lives of those who remained in the Highlands more comfortable and enjoyable. The winding down of hydroelectric construction was caused by rising interest rates in the 1960s and 1970s. Hydropower, being much more capital intensive than fossil power, could not compete economically. "In any event, most of the good schemes had already been built by then, so the end would inevitably have come soon anyway," reflects Ron Baxter.

While Scottish hydro work was in full flood, Halcrow engineers were called to Wales to design and build Claetwen Dam, which opened in 1952. Water supplies for the ciry of Birmingham and the surrounding Midlands had been drawn from Welsh sources since the cholera epidemics of the 19th Above right: Clywedog Dam.

century. It was, however, the later Below: commemorative booklet for the opening of Clywedog Dam, Britain's tallest in Claerwen Dam by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1952. 1967, which gave Halcrow an entree

into the UK water industry. Built to provide an extra 50 billion litres of water, this dam posed some unusual problems, as Noel Cochrane recalls. "The vital constructional cableway across the Clywedog Valley was destroyed by a professional explosion and it was later understood that Welsh Nationalists had subcontracted the sabotage to a Basque group. Clywedog is a concrete buttress dam with large cathedral-like spaces inside around the main control valves. I designed against a sub-aqua swimming parry from downstream by a screen of torpedo netting and against entry to the valve chambers from the side by self-dosing thick concrete rolling doors. The interior caverns of the dam had motion and other sensors fitted and there were hotlines to police and army."

THE

HYDRO

BOYS

Such intricacies of design began to be applied overseas as the firm's staff grew to around 700. In the 1960s many of Britain's former colonies, mandated territories and other less developed countries were demanding aid to accelerate their economic growth and force up their living standards. Their plight was recognised by the newly established international lending agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme which encouraged and promoted viable projects throughout the world. United Nations building,

New York.

These sponsored developments meant that not only was there more work for

The hydroelectric project on the River Caroni, Venezuela.

consulting engineers but payment at the end of it was assured. For many years Halcrow's largest overseas project was the hydropower scheme on the River Caroni, a tributary of the Orinoco in Venezuela, involving a 360MW power station. Completed in 1959, the scheme cost ÂŁ15 million. "Venezuela was booming," reflects former partner, Charles Clarke. "It had at the time the world's highest consumption of Cadillacs and whisky." In the huge development taking place nationwide, Caroni was one of the few schemes constructed on schedule. Built to power an iron smelting works, it stood unused for two years.

125

The firm's hydropower skills in rhe 1950s and 1960s were the springboard for new work in thermal and subsequently nuclear power stations. Similarly, wanime construction of military pons gave a head stan over competitors in the maritime field and led a team to Libya, where Halcrow upgraded Benghazi Harbour to cope with oil exports and engineered Sebha Airpon and a vast reclamation project thar included the Giuliana Bridge. A thousand miles south west of Libya, under the fierce heat of the Mrican sun, the firm's engineers toiled on a hydroelectric powered aluminium plant on the Volta River in Ghana, a project which had been secured because of technical achievements at Beira in Mozambique, where apparently impossible natural obstacles were overcome to build a port with five deepwater berths, 914m long in total, at a cost of ÂŁ5 million. Begun in 1927 and finished in 1946, Beira was a lifeline of the British Navy throughout World War II.

HM Queen Elizabeth II's VIsit

to the port of

Tema, /6 November /96/. Her Majesty shakes hands with Halcrow partner, Peter Scott.

YEARS

HALCROW

THE

HYDRO

BOYS

Ghana's new port was to be sited at Tema, 32km east of Accra. Before the arrival of Halcrow engineers, vessels visiting eastern Ghana anchored off Accra and cargo was brought ashore in surf boats. This was a precarious exercise and many items, including a grand piano, were lost overboard. To this day, T ema has been in constant use and its construction had an interesting side effect in Britain. British engineers had long complained that there was no central modelling facility for water-related projects. Work had to be sent to France or the Netherlands. With Tema on the drawing board, Sir William pressurised the British Government for such a laboratory. He was invited to chair a committee to set one up and the result is today's Hydraulics Research enterprise at Wallingford.

"Terna Port really set us up," one senior partner recalls, "everything snowballed from there."

The new port transformed Tema from a fishing community to a bustling centre of commerce.

125

•

YEARS

HALCROW

•

Versatility and I nltlatlve

In 1908 Henry Ford revolutionised car manufacture with his introduction of the assembly line, but two decades later, cars were common only in the USA. In the late 1920s, Mussolini embarked on a dynamic programme ofmotorway building, likewise Hitler in the 1930s. After World war II, the Interstate Highway System was created in the USA and most industrial countriesfollowed. For the last 50 years, the accelerating rate ofcar ownership has been unstoppable and in the 1990s the world's major cities cry outfor a reversal of this trend, as engineers are commissioned to resolve the unresolvable.

Post-war developments in civil engineering owed much to the popularisation of the motor car which provided Halcrow with decades of controversial road design work. Cars had been permitted to use British roads for just over 50 years but there The A34 Perry Bar Expressway was designed ta carry

were still no highways designed for or dedicated to their use. Then in the 1950s and 1960s highways construction boomed. The firm designed one of the early schemes, a 21!un motorway forming part of the Ulster M1 motorway leading south from Belfast. This was followed in Birmingham by the A34 Perry Bar Expressway, the A510 Expressway and the Great Charles Street Tunnel.

Birmingham's heavy urban and suburban

In Glasgow, the exceptionally tricky Clyde Tunnel Project was won by Sir William whose influence as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers was considerable though of necessiry discreet. Built through heavily populated areas, in weak water-bearing ground and surrounded by public utiliry services, Clyde proved an unforgettable experience. Former senior partner, Sir Alan Muir Wood

traffic ta the M6 matarway.

VERSATILITY

AND

INITIATIVE

Bypass in the east of England, the spectacular, award-winning Orwell Bridge was completed in 1982 and had the largest concrete span in the UK. Its design, still stunning a decade later, was largely the inspiration of Alec Robertson and Malcolm Fletcher.

recalls a "Red Adair" act to stop "cobbles raining down on the houses nearby," when a borehole, pur down to relieve a major problem in constructing the tunnel's north portal block, released compressed air "at a rate of knots, bringing sand and gravel up with it." Engineers overcame all manner of geological complications and the project was by any measure a success. Halcrow's work in Glasgow, Birmingham and later Cheshire on the M67 motorway led to the opening of Above: the Clyde Tunnel and its approach expressways provided challenging ground conditions to all involved in-its construction. Below: the Orwell Bridge.

The post-war transportation boom has been characterised by increasingly complex and ambitious schemes. Many involve tunnelling, a technique much favoured by modern environmentalists and a skill for which the firm is famous, but acquired only after years three regional offices. In 1981 of toil in gruelling conditions. Halcrow took over Buckinghamshire's Dangerous practices which were road construction unit from the lauded or simply expected in the Department of Transport and with it 1940s and 1950s would become the a prestigious workload of motorway outrage of health and safety officials in engineering on the the 1980s. In the M25, M40 and M4 early years, many "In the early years, motorways and other tunnellers regularly trunk roads. put their lives on the many tunnellers line, either by order regularly put their These new highway

or by choice, with schemes spawned few questions asked. lives on the line. "

innovative bridge Lesser evils included lowering engineers designs worldwide. In Dubai, the three Al Maktoum down deep shafts in huge buckets. Bridges built alongside each other over Vertical ladders 30m long occasionally the creek in 1%0, 1974 and 1992, provided a precarious alternative, became landmarks of an expanding which the fit or the impatient climbed and ambitious city. On the Ipswich up and down several times a day.

The hazards of site work were not always due to the contractor, however. When World War II was over, Halcrow continued its top secret tunnelling under London, where the fear of invasion by Iron Curtain countries was still rife. Director, Colin Kirkland recalls, "We were working under Defence Regulations and the Official Secrets Act. We had to ensure that runnels followed the centre of the streets above so that property owners on either side of the road would not need to be consulted. "A huge maze of runnels was devised, linking government departments and key communication installations. To prevent 'outsiders' finding their way underground to Whitehall, no plans or maps were available. On entty you had to memorise where you were and how to get back out. All the tunnels were in darkness. You had to rum lights on and off as you walked through. There were telephones along the route from which you'd get agonised calls from lost tunnellers. I could work out where they were by their description of the nearest bend."

As Halcrow tunnelled on below an oblivious London, railway buffs everywhere followed with interest the firm's work on the Woodhead Tunnel, nearly 5km long and hailed as "not only the epic railway civil engineering achievement of 1954, but one of the greatest tunnelling works undertaken in this country during the present century." Like many civil engineering projects, it was famous for all the wrong reasons.

tunnel engineering f 00 years earlier.

The first Woodhead Tunnel completed 110 years earlier on the Manchester to Sheffield line was "a masterpiece of engineering achieved through much misery and losses of life." (Patrick Beaver). One shaft took four years to complete because of the enormous quantities of water met at unexpected intervals. It was

estimated that during the six years of work, eight million tonnes of water were removed from the workings along with 208,740 cubic metres of spoil. There were 32 fatal accidents, many involving the irresponsible use of gunpowder. The second runnel, driven with similar difficulties, was completed seven years later.

VERSATILITY

AND

INITIATIVE

Potters Bar Tunnel,

Holcrow's successful experiment with new linings ond methods, supported by on enterprising client

Halcrow's project, the third tunnel, had its own share of dramas and in the end 1100 men had to be mustered, instead of the 600 planned. The terrible ground was only conquered at considerable cost. The shaley rock was a nightmare. It "just disintegrates when it is exposed to air," said the resident engineer. "Stuff we have had to blast out can be crushed in the hand a week later." At one point 22m of tunnel strengthened with steel ribs collapsed and completely blocked access. It took six months to work through.

£14,SOO-a-week Woodhead

The BAT'fLE 0/ the

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In 1955, another tunnel, this time at Potters Bar, was causing quite a stir in the local community. A reporter on the Barnet Gazette wrote "As I watched the work going ahead in the glare of the arc lamps on Sunday morning, I thought about the thousands of people who travel north through Pottets Bar. This was all being done for their benefit - a huge engineering project simply to enable the businessman to keep a pressing appointment in Edinburgh."

THE QU!.~~.2~ SCOTS LONDON and GLASGOW LEEDS

HAUOGATE

DARLINGTON

NEWOS1U

EDIN&URGH

and prohibitive price of cast iron led to the invention of a clever, lower-cost substitute. A lining which could be This tunnel was a testament to the firm's technical prowess: novel expanded into the ground would make interlocking unreinforced concrete the bolting of segments and grouting, blocks were designed a particularly lengthy process, and used for the (~ huge engineering lining, expanded unnecessa~y and into position by would reduce costs project simply considerably. In jacks. When a to enable the 1950 the 'Don-Seg,' tunnel is driven, it its name derived has to be lined either businessman to keep a from its creator and .simultaneously or pressing appointment former parmer, Jack following excavation,

Donovan, was the so as to ensure a in Edinburgh. "

first expanded continuous barrier concrete lining to be between the tunnel used in the UK on the experimental and the surrounding ground. Since Victorian times, cast iron rings tunnel for the Thames-Lee Valley (and later concrete rings) were scheme. The wedge block lining was bolted into place for this purpose, then developed from the Don-Seg lining and is in common use. but after the war, the shortage

125

YEARS

HALCROW

British Airports Authority

When Halcrow had the idea of designing new linings and methods by applying analytical techniques, the approach was first applied to Potters Bar. It was for Heathrow Airport's cargo tunnel, however, that the new methods paid the greatest dividends, as Sir Alan Muir Wood recalls. "At that time, the conventional way would have been to go much deeper into the ground and use a much more The Orange-Fish Tunnel, one of many

expensive, conventional form of lining. Then there would have been the considerable problems of bringing up the tunnel into the central area of the airport. Halcrow's way was speedy and cost less than half the conventional method."

megaprojects, the achievement of which entailed working in exacting and exhausting conditions on site under the desert

Although most of Halcrow's tunnels "have been built to satisfy man's seemingly insatiable need to travel from place to place in the

GENERAL MGEME~E

;

PLAN P

lli

shortest possible time, the greatest benefits that tunnels give to the human race are those resulting from one of the earliest applications of tunnelling - the underground channelling of water." (Patrick Beaver). Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the Orange-Fish Tunnel, in 1976 the world's longest, in South Africa. Routed underneath 'The Great Dryness', as it is called by the Hottentots, this scheme enabled 306, 180ha of semi-desert to be irrigated by connecting two rivers, the Orange and the Fish via a tunnel over 82km long. At its peak, the project employed 5000 workmen (l02 sadly lost their lives) to provide abundant water for the farmers and industrialists in the Eastern Cape district. For these men of commerce the tunnel's opening day was one of "unconcealed joy."

As the Orange-Fish engineers burrowed under the desert, another group of tunnellers embarked on two consecutive London underground projects, the Victoria and Jubilee Lines, followed by what is for many the world's greatest tunnelling project, the Channel Tunnel.

Above: building the Viaoria Une under King's Cross, London. The new line cut cross-London journeys by more than half and by the end of f 969 boasted

1.25 million passengers a week.

Right: HM Queen Elizabeth II took a trip on the

tube when she performed the official opening of

the Viaoria Une.

In the late 1950s, plans to build London's new Victoria Line from Victoria Station to Walthamstow, about 10km of twin-bore running tunnels, provided the firm with the major task of reconstructing several complex interchanges. These included King's Cross and Oxford Circus, where designs were to take the tunnels precariously close to the third basement of the department store Peter Robinson, a part of which had to be acquired before local works could proceed. On the same line, HalCl'ow engineers made historic discoveries,

first when they encountered quicksand in the London Clay under Harley Street. The water was thought to be millions of years old. Later a fossilised log was uncovered and sent to the National History Museum for inspection, but regrettably turned to dust on careless exposure to the air.

12S

YEARS

HALCROW

IIIIIII1 A decade later, Halcrow's appointment as joint consulting engineer on the Jubilee Line (1971足 1978) involved precise, delicate underground manoeuvres below Trafalgar Square around Nelson's Column, which, as one of the capital's most famous monuments, could on no account be toppled! However, the toughest task on this scheme was the work at Baker Street where the line had to join into a live railway (Bakerloo), while keeping trains moving and passengers well served. An interesting issue is that the firm's designs included an extension along Fleet Street to North Woolwich, covering a route which would have provided much needed public transport for the majoriry of London Docklands. This section of the line evaporated in the UK's political and economic pell-mell of the 1970s. Amid the sophistication of big league tunnels and rransportalion projects post-war, Halcrow btanched out overseas, working to meet the primary needs of the poorer nations. The growing worlJ population called for more food and more land. Imporrant in the firm's history were two large schemes in Guyana which helped its government reclaim large areas of the country and so increase the amount of setrled land and rice production. Guyana is hilly and covered in forest, the exception being a narrow strip along the coast, where 90% of the population live below high tide level. The first scheme was the Black Bush Polder, completed in 1964. Both administration and construction were

tricky and sometimes tedious, with long progress reports and much reconstruction. Ultimately, 10,935ha of coastal marshes were transformed and could support 15,000 families. The project remained deeply imprinted in the memories of all involved for a host of reasons. "It was a horrendous area of tidal marsh, intractable vegetation, teeming Black Bush Polder, Guyana.

Construaion of the Jubilee Line outside Choring Cross Station, London.

mosquito swarms, small alligators, snakes, wild pigeons, aquatic cows, clays and muds." (Noel Cochrane). More important still was the unforgettable tragedy of 16 May, 1981, when a tourist aircraft, a single足 engined Cessna, carrying five members of Halcrow's team and the pilot, went missing. The search, "one of the longest and most intensive ever carried out in Guyana," went on for nine days, without success.

VERSATILITY

~!,~~

..~~il!l

AND

INITIATIVE

~ m4til.. ~

129 feared dead in mountain disaster

This new legislation provided a new outlet for the firm's geotechnical skills, put to use on just about every Halcrow project today. The qualiry products from Wales, reputedly the best steam coals in the world, required deep mining with all its hazards. Halcrow, already known to the National Coal Board through its work on north eastern collieries since 1952, was charged with the investigation of hundreds of tips in south Wales and Somerset, a task which lasted well over a decade (1968-1980).

Back in Wales, an earlier disasrer in October 1966 had grave repercussions. The Aberfan rragedy, in which a coal wasre rip engulfed a school, killing 144 people, mainly children, focused public and governmenr arrenrion on the safety of colliery spoil tips and led to the 1968 Mines and Quarries Tips Act.

The spoil heaps varied from the large and threatening, located on steep hillsides overlooking valley towns, to the small, relatively stable tips on flat hilltops. The geotechnical investigation of these was a massive task for a peak staff of over 100, tracking the movement of groundwater, tracing old buried mine entrances and testing soils recovered from drilling operations across the length and breadth of the south Wales coalfield.

The coalfields of Wales provided Halcrow with

one of the largest and most challenging geotechnical projects of the period.

This project coincided with the notorious 'winters of discontent' in the UK coal industry, so that pickets, power cuts, largely unheated, semi足 derelict offices and inclement weather were "part and parcel of the richly coloured panoply under which we had to perform our various tasks." (Bob Gray, former director). Halcrow's Cardiff office has thrived ever since.

125

YEARS

HALCROW

The Glories of the Gulf

After World war I large oil resources were discovered in the Middle East and

in 1961 OPEC was founded by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and

Venezuela, later joined by several other countries. As the western powers

depended on foreign supplies, despite US and British domestic production,

revenue flooded into often under-developed states.

At its conference in Vienna in 1973, OPEC increased oilprices by 70% and

later that year in Tehran by 130%. This hit the world economies and led to

petrol rationing. More price rises followed. The upsurge in revenue

enabled the oilproducers to spend lavishly on engineeringprojects, until

over-production and the wests resistance to OPECforced prices and

therefore revenues down.

From their vantage point in the desert, work would have to start on site the all the two men could see was mile preceding Monday morning. Needless upon mile of sea-ftinged sand to say, Mina Jebel Ali started on glimmeting in the schedule. At a cost Dubai sun. The of ÂŁ835 million, it ''All the two men Rulet turned to the was at the time one of the largest engineer beside him could see was construction projects who was privately mile upon mile of wondering why he ever undertaken. had been summoned Rumour has it that sea-fringed sand it can even be seen to this isolated spot. glimmering in the He listened III from the moon. silence as the Ruler It contributed to Dubai sun. " pointed to a vast Halcrow's Middle area and described Eastern era when capital works were designed, contracted his concept of what would be one of and built at a rate exceeding ÂŁ1 million the largest harbour developments in the world. a day for over four years. There was one small hurdle. As the Ruler anticipated a stormy meeting with some influential but restive merchants that coming Tuesday,

At its peak in 1979, the firm's workload in the Gulf represented around 95% of annual revenue. Staff numbers swelled to the highest ever,

THE

GLORIES

THE

GULF

Considered by 'Construction News' in September /978 to be "one of the most do ring" of the

major projects going on in the Middle East, Mina Jebel Ali was "a huge seaport hewn out of a barren stretch of desert foreshore."

1850s (hence the old name of the 'Trucial States'), Britain and the Emirates had enjoyed a strong alliance. When Dubai Creek started silting up The 'super-projects' built by Halcrow and damaging trade, the Ruler of were initiated by a remarkable Dubai naturally turned to the British relationship between the Ruler of Government to recommend a consultant who Dubai and a handful of the firm's engineers. could reverse the ''All sorts of To the casual visitor process. The Foreign Office suggested in the 1950s, Dubai projects were Halcrow, as the firm appeared to be a suddenly offered sleepy fishing town had a representative close by in Kuwait. bordering a creek. to the firm by In fact, it was the heads ofstate. " "The Ruler had home to a dynamic borrowed funds to population including help him improve pearl fishers and gold smugglers descended from some of the the creek as it was the centre of the fiercest pirates ever to sail the seas. dhow trade from Bombay and Basra," Ever since the British had overseen a recalls former senior partner, Harry Maritime Truce in the area in the Ridehalgh. "The first stage was a complete flop. The second stage was a success and we were heroes until one night some months later a terrible storm completely blocked the entrance. It was a catastrophe for Dubai. I was summoned by the Ruler and on arrival dined with the Political Agent. At about 11 o'clock one of the servants announced that the Ruler was in the hall and wished to talk about totalling nearly 2700 in 1978, in order to meet the demands of these mammoth engineering schemes.

his blocked creek. I reminded him that our report recommended three stages, only two were completed and that the third stage was necessary. 'How much will it cost?' asked the Ruler. 'ÂŁ250,000', I replied. He asked if I would guarantee that the creek would remain open, to which I replied, 'I'm not God but I think it's the best thing you can do.' To this day the creek is still open and we have been great friends ever since." The Ruler entrusted to Halcrow most of the Emirate's civil engineering projects and paperwork was kept to a minimum. All approval was verbal, a far cry from the cut-throat post-war arena of Europe. With the discovery of oil in Dubai and its neighbouring states, Halcrow found itself virtually the only locally based consulting civil engineer. All sorts of construction projects were suddenly offered to the firm by heads of state, each anxious to spend his new wealth on improving the standard of living in his country. For engineers whose experience had until then been largely in the UK, Mina Jebel Ali was in a different league. Working on a site in Liverpool, inspector of works Bill Yerbury had been impressed by three massive TS24 scrapers, each worth ÂŁ750,000. When posted to Dubai, he was first responsible for the dry excavation of a hill and rubbed his eyes in disbelief at a line-up of 64 TS24s, glistening in the sun.

.....

Jubail Harbaur cansists of a commercial and an industrial harbour, construaed on previously undeveloped desert

Not quite all the megaprojects of the Middle East fell effortlessly into Halcrow's lap, although many would disagree. The firm's beginnings in Saudi Arabia are one example. There it was acknowledged that in the early 1960s the country's lack of infrastructure and development was stifling trade and this could not continue. With the adjacent war in Yemen, the King nurtured links with Europe and the West. One contact led to another and against American and German competition, Halcrow won the commission for the £778 million Port ofJeddah, followed by the massive Jubail Harbour, substantially completed in 1980 at a cost of £1500 million. The latter is a legend in the firm. Producing a balanced team of 140 experienced

engineers out of thin air in a few weeks was essential in Jubail and in the heady days of the 1970s such wizardry almost became Halcrow's norm. "We achieved Jubail in five years; most similar projects would have taken a century," comments former partner, Viv Hoad. J ubail was to more than justifY its existence during the Gulf War in 1991. Local competition was no less than ferocious among water engineers, of

whom the world's greatest congregated in Saudi Arabia. Against this the firm won two large irrigation contracts, Wadi Jizan and Wadi Daman, but lost favour with its client when, in the former, a weir was washed out. Ron Baxter had the difficult task of righting the wrong, all at Halcrow's cost. Finally with the job well executed, the client was magnanimous and further commissions ensued. In 1979, a welcome recognition of Halcrow's achievements arrived; a gracious invitation, accepted by Viv Hoad, to dine with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and King Khalid aboard the Royal Yacht, 'Britannia'. The Port ofJeddah has 43 deepwater berths with facilities for ro-ro and cantainer handling.

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125

The magnitude of the construction feats in the Middle East and the excitement and team spirit they engendered tend to obscure the physically punishing conditions endured by the engineers, the least of which was the extreme heat and often high humidities near the coast, day after day. Skilful recruiting lured the pioneering types, who expected little by way of western-style comforts and much by way of adventure. Director, Mel Stewart recalls searching for engineers for the Thumrait Airbase contract in Oman, a project located in a war zone, for which his colleagues sported automatic rifles in case of rebel attack.

Thumrait Airbase in Oman was designed, canstruaed and aperational within one year.

....

"Someone had the bright idea of advertising in a cavalier attitude ... 'are you looking for adventure? Then come and work here and be shot at!'" Fortunately replies flooded in, for the Omani Department of Defence required a finished airstrip ready for the first aircraft by the end of December 1974, only eight months after awarding the work. Oman was fighting an internal war with the communists from South Yemen who were infiltrating the country. Every Halcrow move had to be made under armed escort. Cement was flown in from Abu Dhabi for the airbase and 4000m of runway, aprons and taxiways. The build-up of personnel resembled the Klondyke, according to director Geoff Hillier, with 5000 men on site from India, Sudan and the UK.

YEARS

HALCROW

125

YEARS

HALCROW

is no longer the domain of the talented individual but relies instead on closely integrated teams of civil engineers working together ... just as the early engineers had been responsible for civil, mechanical and architectural work, here was a giant joint venture doing the same thing but the circumstances were different and the engineers were bathed in anonymity."

It was fitting that Sir William Halcrow, possibly one of the last of the Great Names, had died before this trend took hold.

Above: Khor Fakkan, UAE, a deepwater container port Right Pon Rashid and the Dubai Dry Dock facility.

THE

THRILL

THE

CHASE

The Thrill of the Chase

The 1980s was the era ofthe entrepreneur and the sky was the limit.

The Conservative Government promoted the ethic ofpopular capitalism,

resulting in a rush ofproperty acquisition and continuous consumer spending.

Its policies fostered a host ofengineeringprojects, from road-building to

business parks.

Abroad, the development ofEurope as an economic, cohesive community took

centre stage. Concurrently, Mikhail Gorbachev went down in history as the

man who brought about the end ofthe Cold war between the west and the

USSR, signalled by the 1989 toppling ofthe Berlin wall.

In the late 1980s, the UK moved into recession, reflecting an international

problem ofsluggish economies in the traditionally strong markets ofJapan,

Germany, France and the USA.

With the M40 motolWay extension to Binningham. Halcrow's long experience of dealing with every type of highway diffiCUlty was

By 1983 the bubble of the Gulf had burst. Engineering investment by the oil-rich countries of the Middle East had reduced dramatically as their revenues from 'black gold' declined. With its over-dependence on one market, Halcrow's workload could no longer support a cast of thousands and the firm underwent radical and sobering changes. The glamour and wealth of the exotic were to be substituted with the solid ground of the home base. Staff numbers were halved seemingly overnight and morale was at a low ebb, but nor for long. The firm strove to build up a new clientele and, within a decade, had expanded into burgeoning and developed markets worldwide, with footholds in many corners of the earth.

essential. Ecological faaors which added to the complexities of the design included a special routing around a wood where the rare Black Hairstreak butterfly breeds.

By 1990 the UK accoun ted for 79% of Halcrow's earnings and staff numbers were on the increase as the firm

enjoyed new growth. The British Government embarked on a majot road-building programme, under which Halcrow was awarded years of motorway and other highway work, including the M40 motorway extension from Oxford to Birmingham and the widening of the existing M40, M25 and M4 motorways. Improvements in links berween the north and south banks of the Thames led to the firm's involvement in the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford and the East London River Crossing, while in the west, work on the Second Severn Crossing began. On the face of it, moving from design concept to start of construction in the 1980s could be said to have changed little since the days of Thomas Meik. With the Treasury's tight rein on the public coffers, finance still had to be raised and lengthy debates on the suitability of a scheme could result in years of delay. The East London River Crossing was a case in point. A controversial design, its Public Inquiry involved engineers in months of preparation of copious notes and reports and presentation of their case in court. Most major schemes today are bathed in controversy and their proponents obliged to'respond to maybe 30 different lobbies. The modern engineer is required to be as skilled a negotiator and communications consultant as he is a designer.

UK construction reached a peak in the I 980s.

In the early to mid 1980s, the construction industry flourished as property prices soared. Office complexes, business parks and commercial developments of all kinds mushroomed in London and nationwide. Next on Mrs Thatcher's agenda was a reform programme which affected just about every institution of British life: local and regional government, education, the professions, public utilities and telecommunications. There was no longer any untouchable cosy corner of existence for career bureaucrats, no longer any 'safe' niche. Competitive tendering became the norm and winning new business an expensive game of roulette. But "the thrill of the chase gets to you and acquiring the skills and techniques of winning and pipping the opposition ... it begins to wind you up," believes Ron Baxter.

The Second Severn Crossing on which Halcrow is joint designer with French (lrm, SEEÂŁ, is a 6km, ÂŁ270 million project It is being built across the Severn Estuary between England and Wales. At the centre of the scheme is a cable-stayed bridge,

9/2m long. This new landmark, only Skm downstream from the existing Severn Bridge, is the largest of its kind in Europe and critical to

Britain's infrastruaure development programme.

125

BrilishGas

~= LONDON ~ ELECTRICITY

The giant organisations supplying gas, electricity, telecommunications and water were to be privatised and public monopolies were considered a thing of the past. The government tackled these one by one, each causing a stir within the engineering profession, eager to be a step ahead and seize new opportunities and new staff resources in a fiercely competitive domestic market.

YEARS

HALCROW

The UK's decline in manufacturing, engineers. Nonetheless their remuneration rarely matched that of begun decades previously, continued their European counterparts, who whilst demand for British brainpower and services overseas remained strong, enjoyed an enviable social status. but only at a price. The world had In just over a centuty, the firm had 'shrunk' with supersonic jet-age travel and advanced telecommunications, and swung from a one or two-man show to competition from a 2000-strong foreign engineers orchestra, but the "The world

and contractors was spirit of individuality and independence acutely felt. There had 'shrunk' with

was plenty of work remained. In the last supersonic

within the UK's decade, however, the booming economy flagging and over足 jet-age travel. "

but competitive competitive UK price-cutting and market created a rash lower public sector budgets meant of mergers and acquisitions, which reduced spending in traditional became at best a fashion or at worst a markets. Engineering in the 1980s dubious life-line for ailing became a labour of love for the organisations. Against this trend, dedicated, a vocation. Halcrow moved sure-footedly to preserve its financial as well as its intellectual independence and thwart Technical excellence. innovation and human interest were always, and are any would-be predators. still, synonymous with British

CITYD

CITYE CONVENTIONAL POINT TO POINT NETWORK

CITY 0

CITY E Hue & SPOKE OPERATION

THE

THRILL

THE

CHASE

The new 5/2km

of the 795km Malaysia North足

South Expressway had to be completed within (lve

years. This was a privatised build/operate/transfer scheme worth 贈 I billion. The expressway included 50 grade separated interchanges, 35 toll plazas and over 200 bridges.

By the late 1980s, British engineering skills would have impressed even Leibig. Water engineering expertise kept abreast of market changes and, for Halcrow, this led to an advisory role during privatisation of the UK's

Close by, the firm's involvement in a

second bridge crossing berween Malaysia and Singapore recalled Sir William's work on the first Johor Crossing in 1919. South east Asia generally had long presented a wealth water industry and of opportunities, to new work in Latin enterprise and "The expressway America. The firm's adventure for runnelling and trans足 consulting engineers. was certainly the portation engineers It had been only in stuffofwhich travelled the world, the late 1970s, working on widely however, that modern dreams diverse schemes. Halcrow ventured and ambitions into the thrusting The North-Sourh community business are made." Toll Expressway in of Hong Kong. The Malaysia, strerching firm was invited to from Thailand to Singapore, was help prevent a recurrence of a major certainly the stuff of which modern landslip which had just destroyed a dreams and ambitions are made, that residential highrise building and other is, the sheer scale of the project homes, with many lives lost. (over 500km of new highway and sophisticared toll plazas), the The firm's geotechnical experts moved challenge of building in the jungle in, expanded their numbers and today and the contrasting luxury of high足 work on projects such as a huge technology offices. housing development, Lam Tin South

125

Site, and the ÂŁ740 million Lantau Fixed Crossing. This will link the island ofTsing Yi off the west coast of Kowloon to Lantau, en route to the new airpott, Chek Lap Kok, due to open in 1997. Given the undeniable shift in the late 20th century from "genrlemen's world" to "commercial world", engineering apparenrly remains a profession where history, credibiliry and personal contact still count. Despite all the advances of the modern world in skills, construction equipment and computer analysis, it is difficulr to foresee a time when new overseas sites are never so remote that a man can forget his first language and when danger and adventure are no longer inherent in engineering. A prime example of the

YEARS

HALCROW

latter is the Nekempti-Burie road linking the northern and southern regions of Ethiopia, opening up a difficulr and mountainous terrain for farming and food distribution. The local contractor's crudely constructed raft, secured and guided by cable and used to transport workers and site visitors alike across the Blue Nile, proved fatal, when one day the cable snapped and all men on rhe raft were lost, presumed drowned in the swift, treacherous currents of the river.

The Abay Bridge in Ethiopia.

Moreover, Ethiopia's continuing civil unrest later led to the bombing of one of the major new crossings, the Abay Bridge, which was left JUSt about passable in an emergency.

Halcrow projects in Hong Kong include the Lam Tin housing development (top), Lantau Fixed Crossing (centre) and pavement testing.

THE

THRILL

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CHASE

There was a simultaneous investment in new technology, exemplified in the UK by the development of a complex, computer-based geographical information system detailing the English east coast. The system generates 'snapshots' of regionally inter-related processes by mapping, tracking and predicting the behaviour of winds, waves, flooding, sediment transport, tides and beaches and provides a tool for the regional and local management of a 1000lun stretch of vulnerable, eroding shoreline. The decade of the 1980s was extraordinary for its changing political as well as environmental and technological scenarios. Long established in the Pacific Basin as well as in Europe and the Middle East, the firm sought new opportunities in eastern Europe and in 1992 entered into a joint venture in Hungary, which became the 70th country on its operational map. Above: the east Anglian coast

Right: crossmg the Brahmaputra River,

As the decade closed, the complexities

Bangladesh.

and high costs of building to new international standards had led Halcrow to recruit increasing numbers of experts who were not engineers. These included chemists, ecologists, planners, economists, hydrologists, hydrogeologists and many more. As world consciousness of the problems of pollution grew, so the firm expanded its skills base to meet the need for environmentally sound designs.

, I

Originally designed for east Anglia, the system has universal potential in coast, land and property management. The firm's technological advances are equally exemplified in flood-prone Bangladesh, where it undertook probably the largest river modelling project in the world; the training of the Brahmaputra represents a challenge as great as that of the Mississippi, which took over 100 years to stabilise.

By 1992, experience of project of the Germans building a tunnel management and engineering of multi- surreptitiously after the fall of France national privatised schemes, with to invade Britain. He concluded that complex funding the arrangements for arrangemen ts and silt disposal would o r g ani sat ion a I "The big league have been too easily structures, had helped earn the firm world-class status. The big league schemes, such as the Channel Tunnel,

schemes, such as the Channel Tunnel, attracted massive public interest. "

attracted massive public interest and perhaps contributed to a heightened respect for the British engineer. Like the tunnel itself, Halcrow's connection with this megaproject has a chequered history but a triumphal outcome. The firm's early input was that of Sir William during World War II, when he was invited by the War Office to comment on the possibility

detectable by air reconnaissance. In 1960 the firm was part of the Channel Tunnel Study

Group which proposed a twin tunnel railway carrying ordinary passenger trains and a special shuttle service, in many ways similar to today's scheme. A further major geological survey was carried out in 1964 and eventually in November 1973, after 16 years' debate, the British and French Governments gave permission for the construction of trial tunnel 2km long from each coast.

The Channel Tunnel crossaver cavern is believed to be the world's largest undersea cavern

soft rock.

THE

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CHASE

The Channel Tunnel site at Shakespeare Cliff, Dover, which wos designed to accommodate spoil from the tunnel.

monitoripg of this scheme entailed fielding more than 50 engineers at the tunnelling and maritime sites in Dover. Experts forecast that over 28 million travellers will use the tunnel in its first year of operation, building up to over 43 million by the year 2003.

However, euphoria was relatively shortlived, for after much further debate and opposition during 1974, the scheme was abandoned by the British Government with only 350m of the service tunnel constructed. David Wallis, then deputy resident engineer, recalls the depression of all those involved, "but I was always optimistic that the scheme would be resurrected during my career." So it was. The project finally came to fruition in 1987. The Channel Tunnel is a great feat of engineering. Its story is an account of superlatives: over 50,000 man years of work; two running tunnels and a service tunnel totalling 150km; 200km of900mm gauge railway track and 150 locomotives used in the UK construction; 400,000 precast concrete lining segments on the French side, 470,000 on the British. Halcrow's key role in the management and

It is fitting that Halcrow's 125th anniversary coincides with the scheduled opening of the Channel Tunnel, the 20th century's greatest engineering project, in which the firm is proud to have played a major role. Ever since the Railway Age, Halcrow has applied its skills and ingenuity to all areas of civil engineering while guarding the integrity and objectivity of its independence. This brief history is no more than a glimpse of civil engineering's extraordinary legacy of triumphs and adventures. As the 21st century approaches, the achievements of the past can only be an inspiration for those of the future, as man continues his eternal quest for improvement and progress.

Celebrating the tunnel breakthrough, summer 1991.

125

YEARS

HALCROW

HALCROW United Kingdom Main Offices London

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Vineyard House, 44 Brook Green

London W6 7BY

Tel: 071 602 7282

Fax: 071 603 0095

Telex: 916148 HALCRO G

Swindon

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Burderop Park, Swindon

Wiltshire S 40QD

Tel: 0793 812479

Fax: 0793 812089

Telex: 44844 HAl-WIL G

Fort William

Sir William Halcrow & Partners

Scotland Ltd

Phillip Thutlow

Tel: 0397705577

Fax: 0397 705128

Glasgow

Sir William Halcrow & Partners

Scotland Ltd

John Strachan

Tel: 041 332 6696

Fax: 041 332 6502

Inverness

United Kingdom Offices

Sir William Halcrow & Partners

Scotland Ltd

Andrew Brien

Tel: 0463 231707

Fax: 0463 243726

Aylesbury

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Chris Heptinstall

Tel: 0296 23571

Fax: 0296 84318

Leeds

Halcrow Fox and Associ.res Ltd

Colin Townsley

Tel: 0532 420662

Fax: 0532 421618

Birkenhead Halcrow Severn Ltd Brian Morrison Tel: 051 6479616

Fax: 051 666 1701

London Halcrow Offshore and Special

Birmingham

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Philip Alexander

Tel: 021 4562345

Fax: 021 456 1569

Bristol

Halcrow Fux and Associates Ltd

John Earp

Tel: 0272 253023

Fax: 0272 225656

Cardiff

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Huw Beasley

Tel: 0222 396726

Fax: 0222 373245

Edinburgh

Sir William Halcrow & Partners

Scotland Ltd

[an Rowdon

Tel: 031 2259599

Fax: 031 225 9432

Elgin

Sir William Halcrow & Partners

Scotland Lrd

John Freer

Tel: 0343 550095

Fax: 0343 550097

Strucwres

Patrick Godfrey

Tel: 071 6027282

Fax: 071 603 0095

Halcrow Group Architectural Pracrice

Roy McGinn

Tel: 0716027282

Fax: 071 6030095

Halcrow Fox and Associates Lrd

Doug Kennedy

Tel: 071 603 1618

Fax: 071 603 5783

Peterborough

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Lc' Buck

Tel: 0733 54031

Fax: 0733 66561

Stockport

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Paul Arnold

Tel: 061 477 9363

Fax: 061 477 2464

Stockton-on-Tees

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Jon Battey

Tel: 0642 613133

Fax: 0642 617573

Swindon

Halcrow Rural Managemenr Ltd

John Bedford

Tel: 0793 812479

Fax: 0793 812089

Halcrow Gilbert Associates Ltd

Terence Tovey

Tel: 0793 814756

Fax: 0793 815020

Halcrow McLachlan Ltd

Derek Pollock

Tel: 0793 845062

Fax: 0793 812089

Haecon-Halcrow NV

Tony Allum

Tel: 0793 812479

Fax: 0793 812089

Indonesia

Halcrow

Roger Ibbotson, Jakarta

Tel: 010 62 21 716048

Fax: 010 62 21716048

Iran

Halcrow Gulf Ltd

Rafik Azamia, Tehran

Tel: 010 98 21 4278890

Fax: 010 98 21 4278890

Malaysia

Sir William Halcrow & Partners

(Malaysia) Ltd

Harry Peters, Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 0106032445402

Fax: 010 60 3 244 4406

Halcrow Europe Ltd

Tuny Allum

Tel: 0793 812479

Fax: 0793 812089

Nepal

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Dick Trimble, Kathmandu

Tel: 010 977 I 418385

Fax: 010 977 1418382

International Offices

Pakistan

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Bill Newcombe, Quetta

Tel: 010 92 8174586

Fax: 010 92 8174530

Argentina

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Martin Heinrich, Buenos Aires

Tel: 010 5413114911

Fax: 010 5413125819

Bangladesh

Halcrow

VR Baghirathan, Dhaka

Tel: 010 880 2 606737

Fax: 0 I0 880 2 883663

Belgium

Haecon-Halcrow NV

Chrisrian de Meyer, Genr-Drongen

Tel: 0103291362256

Fax: 010 32 91276105

France

HFF Conseil

H Le Menestrel, Aix-en-Provence

Tel: 010 33 42920403

Fax: 010 33 42 920679

Hong Kong

Hab'ow Asia Partnership Ltd

Brian Whelan, Hong Kong

Tel: 010 852 802 9228

Fax: 010 852 827 8352

Hungary

vrTUKI Consulr Rt

Chris Green, Budapesr

Tel: 010 36 I 1142245

Fax:OJ036 I 1341514

Philippines

Halcrow

Bernadette Lopez, Manila

Tel: 010 63 2 819 5231

Fax: 0106328195189

Saudi Arabia

Sir William Halcrow & Partners Ltd

Gerry May, Riyadh

Tel: 010 966 I 476 1414

Fax: 010 966 I 4767491

Thailand

Halcrow

Jasim Ahmed, Bangkok

Tel: 010 66 2 255 7904

Fax: 0 I0662 255 7905

United Arab Emirates

Halcrow Inrernational Partnership

Ian McLennan, Abu Dhabi

Tel: 010 9712790804

Fax: 010 9712785422

Halcrow Inrernational Partnership

John Heck, Dubai

Tel: 0 I0 971 4 370380

Fax: 010 971 4 379239

Halcrow Inrernational Partnership

Sev Ferrari, Sharjah

Tel: 010 9716357333

Fax: 010 9716357755

THE

I-IALCROW

GROUP

Operating in

Directors

Albania, Algeria, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Channel Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Kuwait, Latvia, Lesorho, Libya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mozambique, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, St Helena, St Lucia, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, Somalia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Viemanl, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

MS Fletcher (Chairman) D Buckley (Chief Executive) AC Cadwallader (Secretary) DO Lloyd HG Johnson DJ Pollock CJ Kirkland PG Gammie J Weaver DS Kennedy MR Stewart JL Beaver PAS Ferguson CA Fleming GD Hillier JG May NA Trenter VM SCOtt TP Walters

dtI

~ @

.. & â&#x20AC;˘

lallllll.

!!!!!

Certificate No FS 20242

JP Wood J Ahmed RN Craig EP Evans CTK Heprinstall AJ Madden J Thorne PS Godfrey ICMillar CP Barnard P Jenkin B Walton AKAllum DH Beasley JD Lawson JA Suachan P Arnold AJ Runacres MR Starr

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank the many Halcrow people, past and present, who have contributed ro our research and without whom we could not have compiled this document. Their names are roo many to list. In addition, we would like ro thank the following for their assistance in our research British Alcan Aluminiun pic: Richard Wallis, Willie Walker British Library Sir Colin Buchanan Peter Campion

Bill Cooper Leonard Halctow John Hughes, Port Talbot Institution of Civil Engineers: Mary Murphy, Mike Chrimes

National Gallery, London Professor Peter Payne, Aberdeen University Port of Seaham Authoriry: David Clifford, Karen Alexander

POrt Talbot Reference Library Science Museum Scottish Public Records Office Sunderland POrt Authority: Roger Stapleton, Dick Atkinson.

The following kindly loaned or gave us material for inclusion in the hisrory BAA: p47, top left Berwickshire Gazette: p8, centre British Alcan Aluminium pic: p17, centre British Gas: p61, top left British Petroleum Ltd: p61, top left Sir Colin Buchanan: p20, top and bottom left; p21, top and bottom right; p22, bottom left; p23, top right Dark Horse Communications: p61, right (rwo) Eurotunnel: p65, centre right Ford Motor Company: p43, top left Harper Collins Publishers: p7, bottom Hulton Deutsch Picture Library: p41, below right The John Vivian Hughes Collection, POrt Talbot: p 15, top right Illustrated London News: p13, top Imperial War Museum: p19, bottom; p21, top left; p22, top and top lefr: p27, top and bottom left; p28, bottom left; p30, top: p31, top right; p32, top and bottom; p33, bottom right and top; p34, tOP right Institution of Civil Engineers: p5, left; p26, bottom left London Electricity: p61, top left London Transport Museum: p29, bottom left and right; p48, all pictures; p49, top right Mary Evans Picture Library: p16, top left; p17, tOp; p19, top right; p26, top Movie Aquisitions Corporation Ltd: p33, bottom tight (poster) Museum of London: p30, bottom

National Maritime Museum: p52, bottom left National Railway Museum: p8, bottom left: p46, centre tight POrt of Seaham Authority: p16, top right QA Photo Library: p65, top; p66, bottom right Solo Syndication: p50, top left Sunderland Museum & Art Gallery (Tyne and Wear Museums): p7, top right; plO, top left Syndications International: p35, top right Thames Water pic: p61, tOp left Tyne and Wear Museums: p8, top left United ations: p40, bottom left (two) Wordsworth Editions: p 17, bottom right.

'125 Years of Halcrow' was produced by Halcrow Group Marketing. Those involved include Juliet Leigh (early research, interviews and main author), Susan Pacey (tesearch, second author and production), Paul Wilkinson (most of the modern photography) and Gisela Junold (picture research). Graphic design and print supervision: Sears Davies, London. Ref: 071 N8K/IO/92 (Review and History) 071 B/5K/IO/92 (Histoty only)