Vincent Paul O'Grady
Vincent Paul O'Grady
(1924 - )
Vincent Paul O’Grady was born at Tamworth, NSW, in 1924. His father was a wheat and dairy farmer but the business was not viable and became bankrupt, so the family moved to Sydney where Vincent attended a Christian Brothers School in the eastern suburbs gained a bursary to Waverley College. He attended the University of Sydney and graduated in civil engineering in 1946.
Jobs were plentiful and he joined the Department of Main Roads, intending only to remain there for a couple of years but in the event stayed for 40. Hid first work was in Sydney from St Leonards to Chatswood but then relocated to Jackadgery on the Gwydir Highway in northern NSW where it was rough living, and the job was abandoned for political reasons. At about this time he was lent to the Forestry Commission and worked near Kempsey. It was still living in tents but the social conditions were better. This job was the only one in his career that he started and finished. His next job was at Bellangri near Kempsey.
In 1949 he went to Cooma setting out roads and camps as the Snowy Mountains Scheme got underway. His next role was as maintenance engineer on the Hume Highway between Goulburn and Gundagai under the Divisional Engineer at Goulburn. He then moved back to Tamworth where timber bridges were his main concern. This was his most prosaic job in his career and he applied for many other jobs in Australia, but eventually the DMR moved him back to Sydney.
He did course in explosives and scouted quarry sites across NSW. He styed in Sydney until 1955, including three years where he was loaned to NASRA (National Association of State Road Authorities).The aim was to bring six states and the Commonwealth into co-ordinated research etc.
In 1958 a survey of all the roads in Australia was undertaken. O’Grady devised a system to do the task and it was the first time that computers were used for road work in Australia. The study showed that a lot more money needed to be spent on roads. He worked in the Sydney Metropolitan area and then Goulburn before being made Divisional Engineer in Wagga Wagga. He remained there for five years and didn’t want to leave. He spent the rest of his career in Sydney. At this time it was suggested that he should do to Delft in the Netherlands to study photogrammetry but he was not keen nd did not go. Other younger staff did go and aerial survey and photogrammetry became s mainstay of his career. Initially the work was done with a DC3 from 11,000 feet. Eventually all freeway design in NSW was done by aerial survey and in the 1970s people came from other parts of the world to study DMR techniques. Good flying weather and flat country made the method much easier. He did this work for about five years and was then made Road Design Engineer. He became the Australian representative for Rural Road Design on the international committee.
O’Grady worked on the Newcastle and Warringah freeways and was the chairman of a study for a Harbour crossing by tunnel, eventually built as the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. He designed the South Western Freeway from the end of the Sydney Suburbs to Mittagong. As part of this work he travelled the Hume Highway with truckies, realising that the specific design standards were for cars, not trucks. In 1980 he became Deputy Engineer-in-Chief, retiring in 1984.aged 60. His plan was to do something different, but it did not work out. He had several trips to China in 1986 checking the design of a freeway. He learned that there is trouble with politicians everywhere about road design.
He worked in Turkey with an American firm - a road that was the TransEurope Freeway - it started in Gdansk and was to be extended from Istanbul towards Damascus. There was politics involved in the building of that road too.
His last overseas trip was to New Guinea for a road needed principally for timber transport. He enjoyed that work - same job as he had done 40 years before in Bellangri.
To access an oral history interview with Vincent Paul O'Grady please use this link:'
