Happy anniversary

Forty years ago today, fresh out of school and armed with one “O” level (art) I started work in the construction industry. Bill, the bloke who took me on called me trainee civil engineer. He was the Resident Engineer on The Whitley Bay Coastal Interceptor Sewer, part of a bigger scheme to clean up the River Tyne beside Newcastle.

My first job was to make Bill a cup of tea and my second was to “go and supervise that concrete pour”. As a sixteen year old I didn’t have a clue so I asked one of the men “what you doing?”. He said “OK, fair cop” then stopped the pour and removed some lumps of stuff that I later found out should not have been there. I had unwittingly made my first intervention.

At the end of my first week I went out with my mates and one said “so what’s your job like Dave”. I said “I am a trainee civil engineer and I am helping to clean up the Tyne so that one day salmon will return to it”. He said “Yeh right and pigs will fly”. And they did, you can now fish for salmon on the Tyne, I’m told it’s the best salmon river in England and Wales, and you can swim in the sea along the north east coast thanks to that scheme and the work of Northumbrian Water’s civil engineers.

Civil engineering is amazing. We civil engineers quietly get on with transforming people’s lives and I am very proud to have been involved all this time, not that I can claim credit for any concrete pours over the last twenty years. My role is different nowadays.

Recently, I stood beside Kings Cross train station in London and counted sixteen tower cranes – evidence of construction that is further transforming a small part of London and this is happening in most parts of the Capital and in towns and cities, albeit to a lesser extent, throughout the UK and the world.

It seems the work of the civil engineer is never done. What a fantastic occupation and a way to spend forty years. Bring on the next forty, there is so much to do and I am just getting started.

PS

I’m running some free seminars on how to “Stay strong and promote confidence” – for more details go to  http://www.davestitt.com/ideas-thoughts/4591819024/10-ways-to-stay-strong-in-troubled-times/10804825