These are a few of the projects, mostly bridge designs or bridge associated, that I have been involved in over the years. I have no photographs of most of my early work experience projects (I must try to dig up some old photos from somewhere). Which is a shame as I think you tend to look back on early stuff with more fondness of the excitement and newness of it all and a satisfaction of achievement that seems to fade in later life.

Of course, none of the content here is of any interest to you at all but I felt I had to put something down as a sort of album/memory/collection thing and this is as good a place as any. So .....

(If you are feeling bored/nosey/curious, distanced from reality after hours of staring at web pages, or perhaps you really are a closet bridge 'anorak' (get out more, pal), then you can click on the thumbnails to see a larger image - sorry if some of them take a while to load).

Foston Footbridge. Hmm, not very inspiring. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere as I recall, somewhere in Staffordshire I think. Strange, I do remember that there was a bus stop next to it and, of all things, a Borstal (detention centre for young offenders) - easy escape route over that busy road then. Bog standard steel truss footbridge, I didn't have much to do with the actual design but much with the planning.

Arleston Lane Accommodation Bridge. Straightforward 3-span concrete bridge over the A50, south of Derby. Part of a £120 million road scheme.

Ahh, Das Island. Only 2.5 square kilometres, with 6000 blokes (not a single female) living in very class structured residential blocks, situated about 120 miles off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the Gulf. Oil and gas facilities with an LNG plant where the concrete was in the worst state I have ever seen. You could literally put your hand inside some of the cracks (of course it didn't help that BP had made the concrete with salty seawater). My job was to survey and record all the concrete in the vain hope that we could help BP defend a multi-million pound lawsuit by the current owners, who were somewhat miffed at the fact that their lovely LNG plant might fall down at any minute. Should have bought the extended warranty package that the nice salesman offered.

Box Lane Footbridge. Over the A50 in Stoke. Only cable-stayed bridge I have ever been involved with. Quite neat (not my choice of colour though). I think the only cable-stayed bridge around which uses carbon fibre cables instead of steel.

Western Lane Retaining Wall & Silk Hill Bridge. Chapel-en-le-frith Bypass. A good friend of mine, Chris Knight, designed the bridge and I did the wall. Lot of work went into these two. The wall alone cost £2 million in the early '80s and, like an iceberg, most of its enormous bulk is buried from view. A T-shaped, diaphragm wall 1 m thick in the main wall with 2.5 m long x 1 m thick stems to the T's. I can't remember the buried depth but probably about 20 -25 m. The bridge was a post-tensioned insitu concrete deck which enabled a visually slim profile, evident I think in the photo. Here's another (personal) view of the bridge with a couple of my favourite people posing on it.

Delhi Street Railway Bridge. The following words are not mine, but paraphrased from Scott Wilson's website. "...... the delicate operation of removing an aging Victorian bridge that has provided a rail link to the docks for more than 100 years and its replacement by a newly constructed  bridge. The bridge is a major feature of the £42million A1033 Hedon Road Scheme in Hull. This bridge is a 38m skew span steel through girder construction and the deck weight is approximately 600 tonnes. Scott Wilson Designer’s Site Representative said, “We watched fingers crossed as the bridge was lowered into place. It is a real team effort that has made this project work. There were several constraints that provided us with technical (design) problems such as difficult ground conditions, the necessity for minimum deck construction to comply with headroom requirements and the actual building of such a superstructure during a weekend closure to ensure minimum disruption to the operation of the railway line in and out of the port. This was why the new bridge was constructed adjacent to the old bridge and then lifted into place.” The erection process started at 6.30pm on Friday evening when the road under the Delhi Street Bridge was closed and terminated with the successful opening of the road again on Monday morning at 6am. The operation involved jacking up the existing railway bridge deck away from its supports, lifting it into the air and rotating it 90° before transporting it more than 200 metres to a temporary area adjacent to the new deck. The new superstructure had already been jacked some 3.8 metres into the air to allow the transporter to be positioned beneath it. The new bridge was carried by the transporter to the bridge site at a rate of 2 metres a minute. During the transport operation the old bridge abutments were demolished and the new abutments exposed. Again the bridge deck was rotated 90 degrees and lifted some 8 metres prior to being lowered into its final position on the new abutments. The transporter then moved away from the bridge allowing the bridge bearings to be grouted and the remaining portion of the old bridge to be demolished." Well hurrah for us!

At least it worked!

Meir Tunnel, A50 Stoke-on-Trent. A 300 m long cut and cover tunnel allowing the dual carriageway to pass underneath a busy road interchange and pedestrianised shopping centre.  Very simple structural design but so, so many details to sort out to produce the final package. Good job, satisfying and much self-congratulatory smiling all round  - until a few months after opening the steel panel facing installed by the Contractor started falling off into the road - huge traffic chaos and law suits flying left, right and centre. Bloody hell, didn't see that one coming.

Mucho architectural input to give the finished view - red brick (except blue brick pilaster relief features) everywhere, blue steel parapet fences, and don't forget the 5m high triangular pediments at each end with specially cast brick raised relief and badge of City of Stoke. Architects - bane of our civil engineering lives. That's why I like railway bridges - in your face and big, mean and heavy and nobody ever tries to hide it. Expression of functionality.

More from the A50 in Stoke (lot of input to that job). George Avenue Footbridge. Nothing special I suppose, unless you get off on (more) red/blue bricks and green painted steelwork, with huge steel loopy lighting things. Satisfaction though in working out all the details to bring the whole structure together and making a neat looking structure. I remember spending hours on the geometry, tying in the spiral ramp into the rest of the bridge (and into Stoke). This was pre-spreadsheet days - now I could do it in a fraction of the time and have it drawn out in 3-D in an instant. Which is better? Well, at least I know I can do such things without solid state electricity (and, thank God, without Microsoft). I still have (somewhere) a slide rule and a book of log tables! (Secretly prays he never has to resort to them again!)

Now here's a thing. (I should point out that this was nothing to do with me! USA, 1935 or some such time). Probably the most famous bridge in the world for all civil engineering students. The Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridge or 'Galloping Gertie' she was affectionately known as, at least until she collapsed into said Tacoma Narrows. This is not trick photography - the bridge really twisted, real time, like this. Just before she went down there was a guy, and his dog, in his car on the bridge - they just got off in time by crawling on hands and knees (although I expect the dog ran like hell). There are hundreds of websites about this bridge if you want more. I love it. I've also just realised that she rocks in time to 'Sit Down' by James! Good taste, my kind of bridge - go out rocking, baby.

Hong Kong. Route 3 Country Park I think. Had some involvement in a bit of design and some checking. I just love the scalextric view of the interchange

Interesting way of building a bridge deck - just hang it up there while you stress it all together and never mind the live traffic running underneath!

Hedon Road in Hull again - Salt End Flyover. A 7-span, 250 m long steel composite deck viaduct over a busy roundabout, next to the big BP works. Credit to the real designer, Steve Metheringham, I just took the flak as project manager!

Sheffield Supertram, Commercial Street Bridge in the city centre. Didn't have anything to do with the design of this one but we do have a contract to carry out annual inspections of all the bridges on the tram network. Its a nice statement structure in the steel city that I love and think of as 'home'.

Another one from Sheffield. Ladys Bridge - the oldest known crossing of the River Don in Sheffield (some may think I am getting old but I didn't design it). Built in 1485 (see plaque) but now needs some more upgrading around its edges to help it function in the 21st century. Enter modern day bridge engineer!

The bridges crossing the River Dove in Derbyshire. Three eras of bridges in view - 1990's in the foreground, 1970's in the middle and (best of all) in the background the grand old packhorse bridge from the early part of the last millennium, no longer used as a bridge but preserved as a grade listed structure. And I think she puts the other two to shame - bet they won't still be around in 800 years time!

Watch this space for more to come .............