Dick Parker, Engineer

Born and educated in Barnet, London, Dick left school at 16, feeling that he would like to do ‘something with an end product, like engineering’, and he began a three-year engineering apprenticeship with Barnet Council, later moving to Wembley, where from 1965 he began to move into drainage work. In 1968 he saw an advert for ‘Senior Engineer, Milton Keynes’ in drainage, and was appointed, aged 28. He was attracted to MK by the fact that it was a ‘greenfield project… starting from a blank sheet of paper’. At that stage he had an HNC qualification and was studying part time to be a Chartered Engineer. He had done some fairly major drainage schemes at Brent.