James Price (civil engineer)

James Price (6 February 1917 – 22 September 2005) was a Welsh civil engineer, mathematician, author, and poet. Price was the chief resident engineer on several large-scale engineering projects, including the M1 and M3 motorways, and an internationally acclaimed poet.

Education
Price was a national scholar studying engineering mathematics. In the summer higher exams of 1935, he was ninth in the county. Price graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1938 with a Bachelor of Engineering. He joined the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1942 at the age of 25, following examinations he had taken pre-emptively in the summer of 1940. At the same time, Price was recommended for promotion to assistant civil engineer (A.C.E.). In 1942, he became a Master of Engineering.

Career
From 1956 to 1957, Price was employed by Nigerian Railways.

Price was chosen as the chief resident engineer on the first section of the M1, working with Sir Owen Williams KBE and minister for transport Harold Watkinson. The opening took place on 2 November 1959 and prompted a visit by King Charles III, then Prince of Wales.

In the early 1960s, Price took up the position of senior resident engineer for the leading British electrical engineering consultancy engineers Merz & McLellan, who had started a scheme in the interest of reclaiming land owned by the London Brick Company in Peterborough. This became known as the Peterborough Dust Disposal Scheme.

From 1967 to 31 December 1968, Price was the resident engineer for the Tilbury Grain Terminal, which was completed on schedule. From 1 January 1969, he served as chief resident engineer for the first M3 motorway contract in Surrey County in 1969.

Memberships and honours
Price was a member of The Poetry Society, the Welsh Academy, the South and Mid-Wales Association of Writers, the Engineering Council, the Institution of Civil Engineers, and the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management.

In 1997, Price received an Editors Choice Award from the National Library of Poetry (USA).

Personal life
Price married Mary Eluned Williams on 27 May 1939. They had two sons (Newton and David) and two daughters (Linda and Christine).

Engineering

 * 1951–1959 – M1 Motorway phase one
 * 1956–1967 – M1 Motorway phase two
 * 1961 – Peterborough Dust Disposal Scheme
 * 1967–1968 – Tilbury Grain Terminal
 * 1969–1974 – M3 Motorway phase one
 * 1971 – A30 road
 * 1974 – M3 Motorway phase two

Publications

 * 1990 – Price's Progress: The Tortuous Journey of a Roving Civil Engineer
 * 1994 – Passages in paradise
 * Little Book of Poems