MIKE MCCONNELL | INTERVIEW


t is best to start in Northern Ireland, where my father was born. “My grandfather, on my


mother’s side, was living in London, and he was sure in 1938 that there was going to be serious bombing in London. He worked in Holborn, in the Stationery Office, and he did not want my family to experience bombing raids. On his own initiative, he relocated to a vacancy in Belfast; and he upped sticks and took all the family over to Northern Ireland. “I was actually born in Ealing in 1945


as dad was badly injured during the war and staying at London Hospitals, but I still consider myself an Ulsterman, although I have not lived there since 1969. “I was a Meccano kid,” he recalls.


“One Christmas I knew in advance that I would be getting a set. I started building things with it – I was always more into construction than into design. “School was Bangor Grammar School,


where I had to scramble to get my A-levels. What I really remember about that time was the extra-curricular stuff – mainly being in the Scouts. There was camping in the Mountains of Mourne, there was Bob- a-Job week (doing odd jobs for neighbours for a shilling – a bob – a go; that was good start to commercial experience!) I even represented Northern Ireland at the World Scout Jamboree in Greece. Queen’s University Belfast followed,


with a BSc in Civil Engineering. “Even there I felt my extra-curricular


activities were preparing me better for the workplace than some of the university subjects. One such was flying off on a student charter flight from Dublin to Canada for a four-month stint in British Columbia. I was working for a civils contractor, constructing salmon spawning beds in Prince Rupert. The experience was invaluable at my interview with Taylor Woodrow at end of my fourth year. I sailed through the interview because I could talk turkey, as it were, about real engineering rather than about university courses and exercises. Mike joined Taylor Woodrow: “I knew that


I wanted to be with a major contractor. For one thing it would expedite me getting my MICE– the civils chartership.” “They threw me in at the deep end, on


a graduate engineer contract at Wylfa Nuclear Power Station on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales. It was the start of my exile! I was very lucky to have a small job on its own, with a few steel fixers, joiners


Above: Mike at the start of underground works by the Anglo-Japanese JV on the Samanalawewa hydro-electric project, in Sri Lanka, in 1987


“There were two significant events.


I was the last person to enter into the nuclear pressure vessel, clambering through the graphite blocks, before it was finally closed off. Secondly, and more importantly, in my first four weeks there I gate-crashed an Officers Mess dance function at a nearby RAF Base – pretending to be a pilot. There I met a fine lady by the name of Myfanwy, who later became my wife. I was frequently reminded that she was hoping to meet a Squadron Leader and had to settle for a basic civil engineer! “My follow-up assignment with Taylor


Woodrow gave me my first real taste of tunnelling. It was at Hartlepool Nuclear Station, on the cooling water tunnel and caisson construction, the surge chamber and the seabed outfall. “I introduced the concept of a laser


Above: Mike climbing the Great Pyramid in Egypt, on the day off, during the Egyptian Air Force runway upgrade proposal.


and a concrete gang. I was fixing weekly bonus rates at the same time as linking into the main power station, so it taught me a lot quite quickly.


I KNEW THAT I WANTED TO BE WITH A MAJOR


CONTRACTOR. FOR ONE THING IT WOULD EXPEDITE ME GETTING MY MICE...


guidance system. “They were not being used much at all


back then. I actually got the company that made it to give us a free trial. It did not at that time work very well: we were in a tunnel, in a grout-filled atmosphere, and the beam got readily dispersed by all the dust in the air. By the time the beam got to the cutting edge it had dispersed out so widely that it wasn’t giving an accurate reading. I would get told off by the foreman and the pit boss: ‘Haven’t you got that stupid thing to work yet?’ So I was learning at the sharp end. I did get it working in the end, but even so we used ‘Weisbach triangle’ offsets, with piano wires down into the drums


August 2026 | 35


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45