MY LIFE SCIENTIFIC
I’m perhaps best known for my work on theme
park rides and attractions. I’ve been a design engineer
for most of my working life. The projects that I work on
are challenging because each one is unique. There are
no prototypes. You only get one chance to build them
correctly and that’s what keeps me interested.
I became interested in engineering while I was still at
school. I spent a summer holiday working on a construction
site, digging holes in the ground and measuring the density
of the soil. I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week and
made enough money to buy myself a Mini Cooper S. I was
pretty pleased with that. But then I looked at the engineer
driving around the site in his big, white Land Rover and
wondered how much he was earning... and decided to study
civil engineering at university.
I’ve designed a few rollercoasters, including the Big
One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. So when Top Gear
was looking to recreate the car chase from The Italian Job,
they came to me. They wanted to drive a car through a 360o
rotation inside a tunnel... which is more or less the same as a
rollercoaster but without the security of being clipped onto a
track. I instructed the driver and even hand-painted the white
line that he had to follow inside the tunnel.
I oversaw the design and construction of the London
Eye. I’ve been on it hundreds of times but I’m probably a
shocking person to share a capsule with. I get talking to
people and then start telling them about it. They don’t get
much of a chance to look at the view.
This summer sees the opening of another of my projects,
the British Airways i360 in Brighton. It’s a 162m-tall
observation tower that carries a moving doughnut-shaped glass
pod. The pod can carry 200 people at a time and takes around
20 minutes to go up and come back down. The tower diameter
is less than four metres, and it’s just been awarded the Guinness
Record for World’s Most Slender Tower.
The British Airways i360 sounds simple but it’s
technically challenging. After all, it can be windy on the
seafront in Brighton. So we’ve clad it in a specially-designed,
perforated aluminium shroud that reduces the wind pressure
on the tower. And we’ve fitted 76 sloshing liquid dampers,
which oppose any movement and help the tower to stand still.I’m dubious of engineers who aren’t practically
inclined. I can lay concrete, do plastering and turn my hand
to woodwork. If there’s one extra skill I’d like to learn, it’s
stone masonry. The thought of chipping away at a lump of
rock. There’s almost something primeval about it.I know it might sound a bit boring, but engineering is
a job and a hobby. I plan to continue doing what I do for as
long as I possibly can. ßILLUSTRATION: ORLAGH MURPHYDR JOHN ROBERTS
DR JOHN ROBERTS IS A STRUCTURAL ENGINEER AND A VISITING PROFESSOR AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTEREngineer Dr John Roberts talks to Helen Pilcher
about rollercoasters, Top Gear stunts and his
latest design project, the British Airways i360
“WHEN TOP GEAR WAS LOOKING TO RECREATE THE CAR
CHASE IN THE ITALIAN JOB, THEY CAME TO ME”