He was taken into articled pupilage, a form of apprenticeship, by Mansfield Borough Council and studied for a degree in Civil Engineering at University College Nottingham.
[1] He served as an officer in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, being commissioned as a second lieutenant on 16 August 1942,[2] and was posted to North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Austria.
[3] In 1958 he was appointed as the head of the School of Civil Engineering, taking over from Sir Joseph Pope.
[1] He was elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1978[4] and retired from his University positions shortly afterwards.
He later took up the post of Head of Civil Engineering at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology in Lae, PNG.