Operations
During the 1930s, under the direction of Hugh Beaver, the firm brought together architecture and mechanical services with the founding focus on heavy civil engineering, and so was able to offer to industrial clients a complete service.
In 1939 Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners designed 3 large Ordnance factories for the Ministry of Supply; three other smaller factories followed later.
Other notable designs were the Kincardine Bridge, Guinness and Company's brewery at Park Royal, the Captain Cook graving dock at Sydney, Australia, the Singapore naval base, supervision of construction of Phoenix units for the Mulberry harbours and an underground factory for aeroplane engines at Corsham.
Between 1930 and 1936, the firm designed the modernist power stations of the Galloway hydro-electric power scheme.
In 1936, it designed the Kincardine Bridge across the Firth of Forth, which was Britain's largest road bridge at the time.
In 1937, the firm designed the Capper Pass and Son Smelting Works (as well as a row of houses) in Hull.
In 1939, it designed the new Allied Bakeries building, in St Pauls Cray (near Orpington). Originally the Tip Top Bakery in Cray Avenue, now part of the Allied Bakeries division of Associated British Foods.
During World War II,the Drakelow Tunnels near Kidderminster were designed and constructed.
In 1949, Cliff Quay Power Station in Suffolk was designed.
In 1968, Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners was joint Consulting Engineer on the Cleddau Bridge in Wales.
Other later works included the Tripoli International Airport (1978), Devonport Dockyard, Limehouse Link tunnel (1989-1993), Great Man-Made River Project in Libya and several defence and airport projects in the Middle East.
In the UK, the firm also worked on Waterloo International Railway Terminal between 1988-1993, with Grimshaw Architects and Bovis Construction(as the main contractors),., Brook House in Park Lane in London (with Squire and Partners), Reading Crown Courts and HMP Banstead, Surrey.
The firm also undertook a number of important hydro-electric dam projects including the design and supervision of Tongariro Hydroelectric Scheme, (New Zealand), Lar Dam (Iran), Victoria Dam (Sri Lanka) (1975-1985), the Samanalawewa Dam project, (Sri Lanka) (1993), Maentwrog New Dam, Wales (1928) and Owen Falls Dam (1954), Uganda.
Problems emerged on the Samanalawewa project and two years after its completion, its reservoir still could not be filled because its base was leaking. One Sri Lankan geologist has warned: "Samanalawewa is a write off". Also, the Victoria Dam in Sri Lanka has not produced the amount of energy envisaged by the designed.
In 1997, remedial works were carried out on Owen Falls dam under supervision by the consulting firm.
In June 1994, GibbAnglian, a partnership created by Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners and Anglian Water International, won a two-year contract from the United Kingdom Government'sOverseas Development Administration to study the impact of industrial effluent in the city of Tianjin in China. The partnership's task was to investigate the technical, institutional, environmental, and financial issues involved in reducing industrial wastewater production and improving the quality of effluent discharges.
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Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)