Engineers, Architects and Surveyors.

My in-laws are, in the current idiom, 'downsizing' their home and a lot of accumulated bits and pieces are going in the process. One of these is a book with the wordy title of  "Thomas Farnolls Pritchard of Shrewsbury. Architect And 'Inventor Of Cast Iron Bridges' ", by Julia Ionides, architectural historian, who is a friend of my in-laws. They have given me this book, which is a history of Pritchard's work as an architect on the Welsh/English border in the 18th century. I'm a Civil Engineer, so my particular interest was the chapter on Pritchard's bridge designs, including the one for the world's first cast-iron bridge, Iron Bridge, in Shropshire. Iron Bridge is a landmark both in the area and in engineering history, having been described by the great Engineer, Thomas Telford, as forming ' an era in bridge building'. Pritchard had previously been appointed as 'Surveyor' for a bridge in Shrewsbury and the author describes him as '...one of the early architect-engineers...', hence the title of the post. Oh, and my father-in-law is a retired Chartered Surveyor!

Health and Safety is more than a killjoy phrase

When some people hear the phrase 'Health & Safety' they think of activity they regard as normal being stopped by bureaucrats. I'm sure some of the stories we read about are exaggerated and I'm also sure that some guidance is over-interpreted, but safety really matters. It matter so much that being 99.9% safe is not safe at all. The picture is from the Twitter feed of Andy Furlong, Policy Director at the Institution of Chemical Engineers. It shows Frazer Mackay, a senior Director with Foster Wheeler, the global process engineering company. He was speaking at a Process Safety conference in Edinburgh on 8 May 2014. Would you like to be the person who has to drink that glass of water?