During this time he worked for the Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire and Berkshire County Councils, and contracts he was involved with included the Oxford Western Bypass and the M4 motorway between Hanbrook and Tormarton.
The implementation of VALOR was not entirely successful due partly to the limited processing power of the computers available to consulting engineers of the time.
A Windows compatible version was begun but never completed owing to the general decline of local authority design work and the increased use of consultant engineers.
[7] The BIPS system was used by Cambridgeshire County Council until 1999, including for the pre-contract works of the 16 km A1(M) upgrade between Peterborough and Alconbury.
[9] He was appointed a major in the Engineering and Transport Staff Corps, a volunteer unpaid force providing technical expertise to the British Army, on 1 April 1989.
[14] Cottell was given chairmanship of a committee investigating the applicability of the Staff College concept to the British Construction industry by the 1994 Latham Report.
[2] Cottell served as a member of the National Economic Development Office and produced a report, entitled A new approach to road planning, for them.