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Lt Cdr Gwilym Roberts CBE FREng FICE FIMechE RNR

Born in 1925, Gwilym Roberts was a teenager throughout the six years of the Second World War and thus well remembers its disasters and triumphs. Born in North Wales, he was raised and had his early education in Liverpool before going to the University of Cambridge in 1943 to study engineering. Two years later he joined the Royal Navy’s Engineering Branch and saw service in Devonport and HMS Sheffield. He subsequently served part time with the Royal Naval Reserve.

Following demobilisation in 1947, he joined water engineering consultants John Taylor & Sons, with whom he worked on major projects in the UK and throughout the Middle East. After becoming senior partner he oversaw the merger in 1987 of the firm with transportation consultants Freeman Fox & Partners to form the Acer Group, of which he was the founder chairman. (Acer was later renamed Hyder Consulting and is now part of Arcadis.)

He served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1986–87 and of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 2009. He has also been chairman of the British Geological Survey, the Football Stadia Advisory Design Council (established following the Hillsborough disaster), and a committee involved with the construction of the Second Severn Crossing. In January 2004 The Sunday Times magazine named him as one of Britain’s four leading international engineers of the twentieth century.

He is passionate about the importance of engineering to national and global wellbeing and believes that the Second World War could well have been lost but for the timely development by scientists and engineers of the novel systems, machines, and weapons which were used by, and supplemented the valour of, the fighting forces.

Awards for technical papers he wrote when still in practice include the George Stephenson Medal and the Halcrow Prize from the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Silver Medal from the Institution of Public Health Engineers. Some of his more recent publications include:

• Built by Oil (Ithica Press, 1996) (Middle Eastern Post-war Projects)

• Chelsea to Cairo (Thomas Telford, 2006) (History of John Taylor and Sons)

• From Kendal’s Coffee House to Great George Street (Thomas Telford, 1995) (ICE HQ buildings)

And the following papers (all by Thomas Telford for the Institution of Civil Engineers):

• ‘Bridging in the Second World War: an Imperative to Victory’ (with D. L. G. Begbie)

• ‘F E Cooper (1841–1933): the Supreme Resident Engineer’

• ‘How a Diver saved Winchester Cathedral’

• ‘Middle East Archaeology’

• ‘Middle East Postwar Engineering Projects’

• ‘St Pancras Station – Victorian Cathedral of the Railways’