Bill Southwood describes his upbringing in Western Australia and early career as a radio construction engineer and Director of Telecommunications in Papua New Guinea. He moved to London in 1977 to work with Arup as a consultant, initially on a telecoms feasibility study for the island of Vanuatu. He then joined Arup in 1981 as part of a new telecommunications consulting business, led by Mike Shears. He describes some of the challenging projects he worked on. He then reflects on the dramatic internal discussions that took place when Arup won a controversial bid to work for the UK’s Ministry of Defence on the RNAD Coulport nuclear submarine base near Faslane, Scotland. The film begins and ends with his musings on engineering and work more generally.
Bill Southwood