‘Each bridge shows the engineering progress of their day’

Comment David Climie

As soon as the caissons came up the Forth, the towers and the south viaduct started to appear, it became everyone’s bridge. As it has grown and grown and it has become more and more visible, that sphere of interest and excitement has grown and grown.

It’s a huge structure, the longest three-towered cable stayed bridge in the world and a pretty unique one in terms of the crossing cable design.

A message we try to put across to thousands of school children who have visited the project over the years is that careers in engineering can take you all around the world and working on fascinating, hugely significant projects. For me, having been around the world building bridges, it’s gratifying that my career has led me back home to work on the Queensferry Crossing.

The project has really delivered all I hoped it would. We have had many challenges to overcome but that is par for the course on major infrastructure projects and why we have such a world class team. The marine foundations were probably the biggest technical risk and to get through that without major incident was a big achievement. One of the best parts of the project has been how the fabrication in China worked; it went tremendously well in terms of how it has been resourced and managed.

It is a unique situation with the other bridges and I do get a personal thrill from being involved in a new bridge to stand alongside them. And, of course, it’s nice to do something to contribute to Scotland in the long term. It’s unique around the world to have three significant bridges, each the highest example of engineering progress of their day.

Our design didn’t want to jeopardise the area, especially with the Forth Bridge which is now a Unesco World Heritage site. So our design compliments rather than dominates. I think that is another reason people are so keen to come and look at the bridge and photograph it.