Michael Martin

Michael Martin OBE is a British bridge engineer. He grew up in Carlisle and studied at the Carlisle Technical College before achieving a degree in civil engineering from the University of Leeds. Martin began his career as a design engineer at Ove Arup & Partners and served as their representative during the construction of the Kessock Bridge. He thereafter joined the contractor Morrison Construction and was their chief engineer for the construction of the Dornoch Firth and Kylesku Bridges. Under Martin's direction the company won some of the first Private Finance Initiative infrastructure contracts in the UK. He transferred to Anglian Water after that company purchased Morrison in 2000 and became their head of health and safety. After a brief early retirement he returned as a consultant for WS Atkins and to lead a £2.2 billion water infrastructure partnership programme. He returned from retirement for a second time to act as Galliford Try (who had purchased Morrison Construction in 2005) representative on the board of the company constructing the £1.4 billion Queensferry Crossing. In 2014 he was appointed project director for all companies in the contracting joint venture and oversaw the project's completion in 2017.

Early life Martin grew up in Denton Holme, Carlisle, the son of Julie Martin, a lecturer at Carlisle Technical College. As a child he would play on the Holme Head Bridge across the River Caldew and was once, at the age of three, taken home to his parents by a stranger who found him scrambling along the outside of the bridge. A family friend later showed Martin his back issues of the New Civil Engineer magazine and, attracted by what appeared to him as "marvellous salaries of up to £3,000 a year" and opportunities to work overseas, Martin became determined to become a civil engineer. He spent the first three years working out of an office in London on projects including the design of Brighton Marina. Two years later the FCBC project director (Hochtief's Carlo Germani) resigned to work in Qatar and Martin was asked to become his replacement. The bridge construction involved more than 15,000 workers, of whom up to 1,500 were on site at any one time. The crossing is the largest three-tower cable-stayed bridge in the world and opened in August 2017. Martin was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of his role in the bridge's construction.

Personal life Martin has two sons and two grandchildren.