My father, Royston Foot, who has died aged 95, was a civil engineer with an expertise in precast concrete who worked in motorway construction and on newspaper buildings. He was a key part of the design team for Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Initially, he was irritated by the name and always called it Gravelly Hill Interchange, but over time, he grew to accept and then to delight in it. He was interviewed several times for the BBC and featured in a series, The Secret Life of the Motorway, telling stories about its construction and design.
Roy was born to Jessica (nee Hawes) and Wilfred Foot in the Boleyn area of east London, across the road from West Ham United’s Upton Park stadium. Unsurprisingly, he was a lifelong fan. His father, a docker, encouraged him to pursue a professional career. Roy excelled at East Ham grammar school and after serving in the Navy for the last year of the second world war, he trained as a structural engineer at South West Essex technical college in Walthamstow.
In 1951 he joined Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners and in 1956 was recruited by Sir Owen Williams, the designer of the original Wembley Stadium, as an engineer at his firm. Williams specialised in concrete constructions, including motorways and newspaper buildings, whose printing presses required reinforced basements. While still in his 20s, Roy was resident engineer on the Daily Mirror building development at Holborn Circus, London.
During the 1960s, he worked on the Midland Links motorway project, later to become the M6 and M5 motorways. He was a lead engineer on the design and construction of Spaghetti Junction, of which he was enormously proud. He would talk about the very restricted area within which it was constructed, minimising the number of houses that needed to be demolished for the scheme, and of the railway, canals and rivers running through it.
During the 1970s and 80s Roy’s working focus became more international. He had a special love for Hong Kong and spent some time in China training civil engineers. Back home, he undertook more UK newspaper projects with the Mirror Group, now under the control of Robert Maxwell, with whom he had a fractious relationship. He was a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers and the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation.
He retired from Sir Owen Williams and Partners as joint managing partner in 1992.
Roy loved opera and the theatre and was an ardent fan of Kent county cricket club and West Ham. He was a man of faith who took great comfort in the church, attending Holy Cross in Bearsted, Kent.
He met Denise Davidson when they both, aged 16, were working at London County council. They married in 1950 and settled in New Eltham, London. In 1963 they moved to Petts Wood, where they brought up their three sons, Denis, Nigel and me. In 2011 they moved to Mote Park, Maidstone.
Denise died in 2016. Roy is survived by their sons and by five grandchildren, Antonia, Emma, Andrew, Catherine and Jennie, and two great-grandchildren, Maddox and Lucy.
• This article was amended on 28 August 2023 to correct the titles of the three professional bodies of which he was a fellow.
