Civil engineer known for his work on historic buildings

Born: January 20, 1948;

Died: March 17, 2019

JOHN Addison, who has died aged 71, was a civil engineer known for his considerable contribution to the conservation of historic buildings in Scotland, Ireland and United States. He specialised in the structural design and analysis of buildings, bridges and civil engineering structures and worked on many important buildings such as Scone Palace and the Panopticon theatre in Glasgow.

He graduated with a first class honours degree in engineering science from Aberdeen University in 1970 with distinction in mathematics and structural design and at the beginning of his career he worked with Taylor Woodrow Construction Ltd as a site engineer on the construction of Invergordon aluminium smelter and two new nuclear power stations. He gained huge experience in the design of large temporary structures and dealing with innovation at site level. His experience was uniquely different and equipped him with many technical and management skills for use in future years.

From 1974 to 1982 he worked with Robert H Cuthbertson and Partners, Consulting Engineers, on reservoir structures, water treatment plants, river and sea defence works, harbour engineering, roads and drainage, for projects all over Scotland, including water supply and drainage projects at Oban, Peterhead and Turriff. He was also involved with Occidental Oil on its terminal on Flotta, Orkney from 1979-1982.

He was "introduced" to conservation work by Cuthbertson around 1977, and went on to work extensively on historic buildings and structures combining all aspects of architectural and structural technologies in problem solving. He was a past vice-convenor of the Technical Committee of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Scotland (SPABiS) and an affiliate member of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS).

Addison Conservation + Design was founded in September 2008 by Mr Addison and his partner, the conservation architect-engineer Krystyna Pytasz, after ten years of successfully working together as a team on historic buildings and structures within Peter Stephen & Partners (later Aspen Waterman) and as part of Mott Macdonald in Edinburgh. Krystyna Pytasz continues to lead their conservation projects on a stand-alone basis to completion, and also deals with the costing, tendering, site control and inspection, funding and reporting stages.

Mr Addison was an honorary lecturer at Strathclyde University, contributing to the MSc in architectural design for the conservation of built heritage with masterful lectures and practical workshops. He also gave talks on conservation engineering to many authorities including The National Trust for Scotland, Royal Incorporation of Chartered Surveyors, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the National Park Service in Denver, USA.

He was regularly employed by the Royal Household and was a consultant to the Queen's Gallery at Holyrood Palace. Over the years he had worked on some of the most important heritage in the UK.

His practical experience of conserving complex historic structures was extensive and innovative. Occasionally, some of the solutions involved intervention of a high-tech nature or the innovative use of traditional, re-invented materials (iron for example or lime concrete). Many solutions followed traditional methods of repair and stabilisation. With Krystyna Pytasz, he developed many new conservation techniques, special scaffolds for historic buildings, and strengthening techniques for floors and masonry structures.

He considered himself privileged to have such a diverse range of important projects which extended from masonry bridges and medieval castles in Poland and Scotland to thatched cottages in the Highland hills and an American revolutionary war fort.

In between these extremes he was involved in hundreds of large and small listed buildings, bridges, churches, harbours and unusual projects such as transferring the historic Telford Beacon stone tower to another site in Dundee. The tower had to be underpinned, jacked in the air and taken by crane to a new site by the Tay.

Not all projects required intensity of analysis; one recent very demanding old building project involved bringing back to use an old distillery in Annandale which closed in the 1920s. Another was the Grade A Listed Britannia Panopticon theatre in Glasgow, a building very close to his heart - the original roof was strengthened and the frontage restored.

Other Grade A Listed buildings which he dealt with as a lead consultant in recent years included two stately homes, including Scone Palace and Braemar Castle, open air swimming pools at Tarlair and Pittenweem, and the rescue and conservation of the historic weir at Catrine.

For John Addison, in his own words: “All this is just everyday conservation where practical building knowledge is essential. Whatever the conservation challenge, the key to it all is getting a full understanding what is there, what is wrong with it (if anything) and putting it right with the least loss of historic material.”

As well as his work, Mr Addison was applying his skills to restoring the 16th-century home he shared with Krystyna. He is survived by her, his daughter Susan, and his two sons Colin and Stuart from an earlier relationship, his two grandchildren Cameron and Jennifer, his sister, Sheila and brother Mike.