Joseph Locke: pioneer civil engineering project manager

Joseph Locke (1805–1860) was one of the four great railway civil engineers of the first phase of railway building in the UK and the wider world. Less well known than Brunel and the two Stephensons, he was a good manager of the projects of which he had charge and certainly the best manager of the four. The technology of civil engineering has changed hugely since Locke's time but the skills of the civil engineering manager have not. The lessons of Locke's career are therefore not only interesting but potentially instructive to modern civil engineers.