JOHN CORCORAN | INTERVIEW
“
’ve always liked doing things, less so talking about things. As a child I loved building towers, being active, and helping my dad dig the garden.
At 16, I told the career’s officer this, and he suggested I study Civil Engineering. I took a year out, spending a good deal of time building houses with my cousins in Ireland.” John studied at Aston University over
1981-84. He says, “After a brief spell working for the supervisor in Bristol on the From Valley Relief Sewer, I joined a contractor.” The next 12 years was spent with Balfour
Beatty. “That is where I did my training under agreement and became Charted. My first introduction to tunnelling was around 1986, sinking shafts in Wiltshire. The General Foreman there made a big impression on me. It was a small job so I got to know him really well. His name was George Gladwell, but everyone called him ‘The Bomber’, I believe because during the war his father used to dig out some of the unexploded ordnance up in London. We became good friends. “I decided that I liked tunnelling. I liked the
intensity of it, I liked the way the gang went to work, as a team; and, to be part of that, to be accepted into the gang, I think was huge. I have always enjoyed that connection with the workforce, the trust that builds up. John was born and brought up in
Newbury, in Berkshire. His father was from Ireland. “Every summer we all used to go back
and help my grandfather bring the turf back from the bog. I have always enjoyed physical work. I’m also a big fan of poetry, and there is a Seamus Heaney poem about digging that reminds me of my grandfather. “My father told me, when I was around 16,
that if I lived to a hundred no matter how hard I worked I would never work as hard as my grandfather; he was right. “My next tunnel job was at the Angel in
1990. It was a very long escalator shaft, all dug by hand. Again The Bomber was there, and Andy Sindle, so I learned a lot there about hand work and production. Whilst there, Andy encouraged me to
submit a paper for the BTS Harding Prize Competition and I was lucky enough to be one of three selected to give a presentation. The paper was on the Angel Escalator Shaft. My mum, dad and 16-year old sister travelled up from Newbury to the ICE at Great George Street. It was the only time I can ever remember my dad visiting London. Also there was my girlfriend, and Andy Sindle, and The Bomber; what a support
team! The presentation went very well. It was a fantastic evening that I still remember clearly even though it was over 30 years ago. “That was when I started getting
acquainted with the BTS evening presentations, which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed the social in the bar afterwards as well. I was usually the last to leave. His next tunnelling job was in 1994, at
the Heathrow Express - “my first job as site agent.” Based at Car Park 5, they used a Howden open-faced TBM to drive the running tunnels from T4 to the Central Terminal Area (CTA). “We had a great team there. Harry Lyle
was the GF who brought in his team of trusted miners from the Channel Tunnel. We worked as a team and trusted each other. I remember driving to work one morning hearing on the radio about the collapsed tunnels, and breathed a sigh of relief when I heard it was not my section. But it serves as a reminder to this day, that if you get tunnelling wrong, the consequences can be immense.” After Heathrow, he was transferred to the Jubilee Line Extension, Contract 102.
“That was a terrific job with over 600
men, and a huge amount of work was carried out, and from my point of view it was very successful. “I put the plan together to dismantle the
old segments at the Green Park Step Plate Junction (SPJ). This enabled the new train track to be connected to the existing. Thankfully, it went well and we only needed two of the three planned weekend possessions. It was a great example of planning and engagement with the foremen and the teams doing the work. I leaned heavily on the GF, Tom Gorman, who had an amazing brain for planning work, someone who you always benefitted from after asking his advice. I still have the original method statement with Colin MacKenzie’s hand-written comments on it.”
In 1997, he left Balfour Beatty and joined
Miller Civil Engineering (now Morgan Sindall) for the Hastings Stormwater project - “and I have remained with them ever since.” The Hastings job was his first slurry TBM
drive. “Getting the Herrenknecht TBM down to Hastings was a story in itself,” he says.
Above: Cutterhead breakthrough at Hastings Stormwater Tunnel April 2025 | 33
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