He was president of the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) in 1997-1998 and the 2003 recipient of their Gold Medal.

He served as Chairman of the Scottish Building Standards Advisory Committee.

[1] Thorburn was educated in Hamilton Academy, which he left at 16 to work under a training agreement with a civil engineering contractor,[2] and studied during the evening at the Royal Technical College, Glasgow — now the University of Strathclyde.

[3] One of his significant projects was the design of Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow [4] Thorburn was Chairman of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association of the Institution of Civil Engineers for the session 1975-76 [5] He was appointed to the Football Licensing Authority formed in 1990 after Lord Justice Taylor's Report on the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989.

[8] He was appointed first chairman of the new Scottish Registration Board for Approved Certifiers of Design (Building Structures) formed in 2004 [5] Thorburn was the first recipient of the Rear Admiral John Garth Watson Medal awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1993.