Alexander Gibb

Sir Alexander Gibb (12 February 1872 – 21 January 1958) was a British civil engineer. After serving as Civil Engineer-in-Chief to the Admiralty and Director-General of Civil Engineering at the Ministry of Transport, he established the engineering consultancy firm Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners.

Early life and military service Gibb was born in Broughty Ferry, Forfarshire, the son of civil engineer Alexander Easton Gibb and his wife, Hope Brown Paton. He was the great-grandson of John Gibb, an early member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a colleague of its first President, Thomas Telford.

He was educated at the High School of Dundee, the Abbey School in Beckenham, Rugby School and University College London, although he left the latter after a year to become articled to the prominent civil engineers John Wolfe Barry and Henry Marc Brunel.

Having completed his training, he became resident engineer on the Metropolitan District Railway's Whitechapel and Bow Railway extension. He joined his father's company, Easton, Gibb & Son, in 1900 when they were building the King Edward VII Bridge at Kew. daughter of Fleet Surgeon John Lowry Monteith RN, and they had three sons, including Lieutenant Colonel Alistair Monteith Gibb. Later that year he was appointed Civil Engineer-in-Chief to the Admiralty with responsibility for all naval civil engineering works, with projects including the Admiralty M-N Scheme - an anti-submarine boom across the English Channel.

Gibb founded his own firm, Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners, in 1922 after becoming a consulting engineer the year before. He was involved in a variety of projects worldwide, including Barking Power Station, the Galloway hydro-electric power scheme (1935-36) (both with Charles Hesterman Merz and William McLellan), the Kincardine Bridge (1936), a study at the port of Rangoon and work at the Singapore Naval Base.

Outside of engineering, Gibb served as Vice-chairman of the Managing Sub-Committee of University College London, sat on the Education Committee of the London County Council and was a member of the Council and Executive Committee of Princess Helena College.

Gibb was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1936 and was a member of a number of professional bodies, holding the presidencies of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1936–37), the Institution of Chemical Engineers (1927–28 and 1928–29), of which he was an original member, the Institution of Engineers-in-Charge (four times), the Institute of Transport, the Junior Institution of Engineers, the Institute of Welding (three times) and the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry. He was also chairman of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering and the first civil engineer appointed to the Royal Fine Arts Commission. and was appointed Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown, Grand Officer of the Order of Boyaca, Colombia and Grand Cross (1st class) of the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia (4 October 1935).

Gibb was a prominent Freemason and became Provincial Grand Master of Ross and Cromarty and Past Substitute Grand Master of Scotland.

He was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2023.

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