INTERVIEW | BOB IBELL
“There were a number of real issues.
One of them was the Resident Engineer. He was a man who was seen as a problem but actually we became real good buddies. The problem was that he was very experienced, he knew what he wanted, and he wasn’t getting it and that was really bothering him. I brought in some new workers, from up in Gateshead and Glasgow and I remember the day my chief carpenter walked onto the site with an adze, to shape the planks for the groynes. I can remember the smile coming over the RE’s face. ‘Aaah! Just what I’ve been waiting for!’ Half of engineering is getting the right people in the right place at the right time. The other half is setting up the right attitude and actually understanding really what the problem is. And that is as true now with TBMs as it was in the days when they did it with a pickaxe. “The carpenters on site were demoralised
as well. Their productivity was dreadful. In those days, engineers were responsible for setting and measuring outputs against production targets for paying the workforce, so I said ‘Right, I tell you what we’ll do. I will draw you up a graph: one axis is output in terms of the area of formwork fixed against all worked hours; the other axis is money. And that will set the bonus rate per hour.’ We were talking about handling really difficult shuttering, and it was tide-dependant work so if you didn’t start casting by a certain time, you were in trouble. The productivity improved dramatically, and the tide work proceeded on target. I took terrible stick from my director for offering them so much money. But, I said. ‘Just look at the productivity’. My director kind of went silent, then said in a resigned sort of voice ‘Ah. I see what you mean. But it won’t go on for long, will it?’ They worked so fast that it didn’t go on for long: we got the job done and it was money well spent. That was quite an experience.” There was a brief interlude when he
Top: Celebration of Piccadilly Line extension to Heathrow T4. Underground (in ventilation chamber), in Brunel tradition Centre: Underground development at Redcross Way for access to new Jubilee Line tunnels and Northern Line works Above: Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) tunnel, Stratford to Barrington Road(C240), under construction
40 | November 2023
moved to the oil side of the business for Taywood Santa Fe as a quality engineer. There, he learned about not only oil pipelines but also databases. “Any experience is good experience,” he says about that. But when the price per barrel plummeted, he returned to the UK and to tunnelling in earnest. “We did the Piccadilly Line Extension
to Heathrow Terminal 4. That’s when we really got into making precast linings. We developed a slick system that would lift the whole ring of segments in four bundles down onto a car at the shaft bottom. We
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