My favourite bridge project would have to be the Tamar Suspension Bridge across the River Tamar, between Cornwall and Devon. It was built between 1957 and 1961, and at the time, it was the longest suspension bridge in the UK: it's still the fourth longest. It's a nice old chunky bridge, not without its problems. One of the things I did during my time in Cornwall was project managing its strengthening and widening.

I enjoyed having to do the problem-solving around it, obviously alongside a team of consultants and experts. The trick is that we had to do all the strengthening and widening while it was still open to traffic, so it was quite a challenge. It was even more interesting because it was originally built under an Act of Parliament, so we had to get another Act of Parliament to carry out the work. I had to give expert witness testimony to select committees, which is something you don't do every day of the week. It was a great experience and in 2002, we completed the project, 40 years after the bridge was originally opened. That will stay long in the memory.

The importance of bridges

The general public take bridges for granted. They've got absolute trust in the engineers designing and building bridges. One of the things I've been doing, for the Bridge Owners Forum, is keeping track of bridge collapses around the world. It’s quite scary how many bridges have collapsed and the numbers of fatalities – over 1,000 in the 21st century – is quite sobering.

Building bridges is a huge responsibility, but all the codes and standards often obscure the bigger picture. Everyone involved needs to take a step back and consider what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's a big issue for engineers, which I don't think everyone gets. There's a tendency just to plug something into a computer, out comes an answer and it'll be alright.

Uniting communities

We once built a footbridge with Anneka Rice for the Challenge Anneka programme in Wadebridge, Cornwall. There wasn’t a footbridge between the two sides of the river and for years people had been asking for one. It got through to the BBC and we made a programme about it. It’s still in use a lot.

In the last ten to 15 years pedestrian and cycleway bridges are becoming as important, if not more important, than new road bridges. They’re more inclusive and add extra benefit to a community who may well have been fighting their way on bikes or pushing pushchairs next to the traffic. A little bridge improves the quality of life and quality of journeys – and it helps with the promotion of active travel.

The next generation

Civil engineers starting out now have to be aware of the carbon agenda and the need to minimise materials that will create less carbon. There's climate change as well. The carbon agenda's the mitigation part, but you've got to do something about resilience. Those things may not be as attractive from a pure engineering point of view, but they’re absolutely fundamental for the future of the planet, so you've got to go in eyes wide open, recognising that there's a whole stack of issues.

Equally, it's just as important to remember that we've got to look after what we've got rather than investing in “new” all the time. We should be investing in making existing bridges last as long as they possibly can. That is the essence of sustainability.

Richard Fish was in conversation with Craig Thomas.

Listen back to Richard Fish on the CIHT Podcast on Bridge collapses and Grand Challenges: What are the lessons from the Genoa Bridge collapse? 

And see Anneka Revisited – returning to Wadebridge 25 years on.

Richard Fish

Listen back to Richard Fish on the CIHT Podcast on Bridge collapses and Grand Challenges: What are the lessons from the Genoa Bridge collapse? 

And see Anneka Revisited – returning to Wadebridge 25 years on.