When Bill Brown joined the civil engineering firm, Freeman Fox & partners, in the 1950s he worked on many types of project with Gilbert Roberts, the Senior Partner. One of the early projects was the design of a giant Goliath crane (360-tonne lifting capacity and 76m span) for Babcock & Wilcox for use in the construction of nuclear power stations. It had to be light and easy to erect and dismantle. Bill and Gilbert Roberts created a structure with latticed legs and a bowstring girder. Two were built for the nuclear stations before being used in shipyards in Norway and Cadiz, Spain.