Like many young boys, David Climie’s imagination was captured by Meccano.
Fast forward a career spanning several decades, and numerous continents, and David is overseeing Scotland’s largest infrastructure project for a generation as Transport Scotland project director of the Forth Replacement Crossing.
From his office he can gaze out on the continuous work to build the £1.6 billion bridge, which has brought him back to his homeland after working on some of the most challenging projects around the world.
David said that from an early age he was fascinated by bridges.
While he was a pupil at Perth Academy a neighbour arranged for the teenager, who wanted to pursue a career in civil engineering, to visit the under-construction Friarton Bridge.
There followed a sponsorship from the Cleveland Bridge construction firm while he was studying at Heriot-Watt University, summer placements and a job with the company after he graduated.
Work followed on the Kessock Bridge at Inverness before spells in Port Talbot, Darlington and Sunderland.
Then the world opened up for David.
“I got a call saying there’s this job in Cairo on the expressway from the airport would tomorrow be OK? I said OK, but how about next week instead?”
David went on to spend a couple of years in Egypt, supervising the labour force including a stint where work was delayed as martial law was imposed.
After several UK-based projects he was called on to work on the Tsing Ma suspension bridge in Hong Kong.
“There was so much going on at that time the handover of Hong Kong and the new airport and the projects linked to it,” he said.
“It was a bit of pressure because if the airport was finished and our bridge wasn’t … But that potential trouble focuses the mind.”
Then it was back to Europe, and the Storebaelt Bridge in Denmark, an 18km-long construction linking the east and west of the country.
Shortly before his work was completed there he got a call from Cleveland’s managing director to return to London where he was told he would “be going to Lancaster House as project manager for a suspension bridge in China”.
So started his involvement on the Jiangyin suspension bridge.
During the project he was told: “If you get it done on time you will be very famous. And if you don’t you will be very, very famous.”
David’s next move was from communist China to America when he heard construction company Bechtel was interested in working on the project to deliver a sister Tacoma Narrows Bridge near Seattle.
This is the site of the infamous ‘Galloping Gertie’ bridge that opened in July 1940 but collapsed just four months later.
“I was still working for Cleveland, who were tendering for a bridge near San Francisco, but my thinking was there was too much competition and the project was bound to go to an American firm.
“So I said yes to Bechtel just before Christmas and went off on holiday to Australia.
“The phone rang in the middle of the night and it was my dad who said I hope you don’t mind, but I had to give Cleveland your contact number Cleveland has won. Suddenly two suspension bridges came along at once.”
But being a man of his word, he stuck with the Tacoma project one which has resonance with the new Forth crossing.
“There are a lot of similarities,” David said. “Again it was a new bridge alongside an existing one and there was a fair amount of local interest.”
From there it was on to Istanbul, Qatar and then Gatwick Airport. It was while he was working on that project that he saw the Transport Scotland advert seeking a project director for the new Forth crossing.
“So here I am, close to my dad John and my brother and his family,” David said.