page_title: Terence Patrick O'Sullivan
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Terence Patrick O'Sullivan / Early career
context_page_description: Terence Patrick O'Sullivan was a British civil engineer. He specialised initially in steel and reinforced concrete structures. Later he founded a firm of consulting engineers, T. P. O’Sullivan & Partners, which grew to have offices on four continents and made a reputation in the field of infrastructure development, particularly in the developing world.
context_section_description: His first job after graduation was with a newly founded consulting engineering firm, L. G. Mouchel and Partners. Mouchel was a French engineer noted for his work in reinforced concrete structures who set up his firm in England during the 1900s. There O’Sullivan came under the influence of an eminent French engineer and associate of Mouchel, Clément Gilbin, and for ever afterwards was an admirer of the creativity of French engineering.
  In 1937, since Mouchel's paid only four pounds ten shillings per week and his first child was on the way, he joined the London Power Company and took part in the design of Battersea Power Station. As with many professionals at the time, his career was thrown off course by the Second World War: in 1938 he began a five-year term working for the Air Ministry Works Division on a series of airfield construction projects throughout Great Britain. Next he was involved with the construction of the fourth and final chimney at Battersea, as well as with the design of Deptford Power Station. During this period he returned to university as an external student, all the while doing a demanding full-time job and bringing up a family of three boys. He was awarded a PhD by the University of London for a thesis on reinforced concrete design.  This was later published by Pitmans as The Economic Design of Rectangular Reinforced Concrete Sections, a book notable for its clarity and concision of style.
  He returned to consulting engineering and joined Brian Colquhoun & Partners. Colquhoun had been resident engineer on the Mersey Tunnel, and became an associate of Lord Beaverbrook, involved in the accelerated construction of aircraft factories. At the end of the war he had proved his engineering credentials and was well connected within the government of the time: his firm flourished. O’Sullivan was appointed its Chief Engineer, and in this capacity tackled a deep water dock scheme in India, a £10m tunnel scheme in Argentina, and major reconstruction work for the Gas Board at Beckton, as well as embarking on his chef d'œuvre, the design of the Assembly Hall at Bristol in which was built the gigantic Bristol Brabazon aircraft. This, a steel and glass edifice, was at the time the second largest building by volume in the world, and had the largest door. It could house three Brabazon aircraft of 230 ft wingspan, side by side, and its design and construction required O’Sullivan to extend current steel structure design theory.
  His work on this led to a paper The Strengthening of Steel Structures Under Load, for which he was awarded a Telford Premium by the Institution of Civil Engineers. He also published a paper on the testing of concrete piles in the 1948 inaugural volume of the Institution's flagship journal, Géotechnique.  On 25 September 1951 he became a Fellow (in those days called a Member) of the Institution, in which capacity he contributed to discussions in its Works Construction Division and Structural and Building Engineering Division.
caption: Battersea Power Station
exif: {}