My father-in-law, David Osorio, who has died aged 91, was a civil engineer specialising in underwater pipelines who also designed coastal defences – sea walls, breakwaters and groynes – around Britain’s shores.
At many seaside locations he would point out that holidaymakers were able to enjoy the beach only because he had propped up a nearby cliff. In the 1970s and 80s, as councils became more environmentally aware, he also pioneered new methods of constructing sewage outfalls to disperse effluent much further out to sea, laying ambitious submarine tunnels in the UK, Australia and East Asia.
