[2] He was educated at Ealing Grammar School for Boys (1961-1968), followed by undergraduate studies in engineering at King's College London (1969-1972).
[3] He was a British sprint canoeist, representing Great Britain at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City,[4] where he was eliminated in the semifinals of the K-2 1000 m event.
[6] While there, he worked on a series of diverse projects, including the high tech Patera Building designed by a proponent of British High Tech architecture Michael Hopkins,[7] Halley IV research station for the British Antarctic Survey,[6] and a timber dome at Crestone, Colorado, USA, with architect Keith Critchlow.
Whitby remained with the company, and when in April 2009 it became Ramboll UK,[11] he was named Chairman, a position he retained until he left later the same year.
Before he left, he was director responsible for the company’s commission to undertake engineering services for the extension to Tate Modern (architect: Herzog & de Meuron).
[13] Whitby appeared with archaeologist Julian Richards in the BBC TV series, Secrets of Lost Empires: Stonehenge (1994, broadcast 1997), in which the team tried (and succeeded) to move and erect simulated standing stones using only the technologies available to prehistoric builders.
Whitby has been instrumental in the formation of a number of organisations that cover the broad culture of engineering.