The London Eye, London

Whilst working for Allott and Lomax (now part of Jacobs) John led the consulting engineering team which carried out the independent verification and certification of the London Eye, the UK’s largest and most successful visitor attraction project, which was completed in 2000 and has already carried in excess of 75 million passengers.

The steel structure for the London Eye was fabricated partly in the Netherlands and partly in the Czech Republic, with the spoke cables coming from Italy and the drive mechanism coming from Germany. The 32 passenger capsules were manufactured in France using double curvature purpose-made glass sourced from Italy. Most of the materials were delivered by sea directly to the site on the edge of the River Thames, and the Wheel was constructed fully in the horizontal position on temporary foundations in the river bed, before being jacked upright over one weekend in November 2019. The project has been awarded numerous accolades and is widely regarded as an iconic London landmark.

The engineering expertise required for this project was exceptionally challenging.