Jim Hill: A fearless champion of better car parks

British car park engineering guru Jim Hill passes away in retirement in Arizona

Jim Hill, a pioneer of modern car park design, has died at the age of 85. In 1967 he and John Cannon formed the consulting practice Hill Cannon & Partners. In the early 1970s Hill Cannon sought to tackle a common problem in multi-storey car parks: concrete columns sitting between parked cars, making it difficult to open doors and creating poor sight lines.

Working with a local contractor, Hill Cannon developed one of the world’s first clear-span, modular structural frames for multi-storey car parks. Known as ‘Tricon’, this was an economical form of reinforced insitu concrete construction that proved to be very popular, with more than 100 multi-storey car parks built using Tricon over a period of 30 years.  

Being so involved in the design of MSCPs led Jim to become one of the country’s leading experts in the design of car parks including user-friendly and economical geometric layouts. He was co-author of the British Steel Corporation’s 1990 publication, Multi-storey Car Parks: the first of a series of publications on car parks to bear his name. He went on to co-write the Car Park Designer’s Handbook, which is a publication by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

Hill became actively involved with the British Parking Association (BPA) and served a period as its president. He was also a regional chairman of The Concrete Society.

Outside of work he was a keen glider pilot and member of the Yorkshire Gliding Club based at Sutton Bank, North Yorkshire, where he met his American wife Rosie, who was one of his pupils.

Hill retired as a partner of Hill Cannon in the early 1990s, but remained as a consultant. He invented the patented VCM (Vertical Circulation Module) system for multi-storey car parks. “This system proved to be very user-friendly for the parking public in terms of accessibility around car parking decks and as such over 80 MSCPs have since been constructed using VCM,” says Glynn Rhodes, a partner in the current Hill Cannon Consulting LLP and a co-author of The Car Park Designer’s Handbook.

When Hill eventually retired as a consultant to Hill Cannon, he moved with his wife Rosie to Phoenix, Arizona in the USA. Even then, he found time to contribute to a second edition of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Car Park Designer’s Handbook, which was published in 2014. 

Hill’s life in America was, however, about much more than parking. Glynn Rhodes recalls: “While in Arizona he maintained a range of interests, including producing newsletters on topics he researched with his own spin on an Englishman in America to entertain his family and friends.”

Chris Whapples recalls Jim Hill’s adventurous spirit

I was really saddened to learn about the passing of Jim Hill and will remember him as one of life’s true characters. Jim and I were partners for a number of years (I guess about 25) and in all that time we were not only good friends, but we also worked closely together as business partners. I have worked with lots of engineers over the years and Jim was, without doubt, one of the most talented and creative engineers – he could turn his hand to anything from car parks to historic buildings. He would not accept the ordinary. This picture tells it all. No, he is not trying to commit suicide, but simply making the point on how dangerous car park environments can be!

Jim started his professional career in London then moved to Harrogate, Yorkshire, where he joined forces with John Cannon as founder partners of Hill Cannon & Partners. In all the time that I worked with Jim, we had lots of lively discussions on how to, or not to design car parks resulting in the development of the Vertical Circulation Module (VCM) system.

Jim grew up in London and used to reminisce about his time during the Blitz as a young boy collecting shrapnel and observing buildings that had been bombed the night before. I think that he learnt his engineering skills by seeing just how little structure was needed to remain standing. He was a glider pilot in his spare time (hence the head for heights) and a very good model-maker, which enabled him to make a scale model of the VCM. Besides being fearless, Jim would never take no for an answer and would defend his principles to the bitter end, even if it meant going to court to defend all important copyrights.

Married to an American, Rosie, he spent his later years in Phoenix Arizona. Sadly, Rosie and Jim lost their daughter Catherine. His son Stephen continues to live in North Yorkshire.

Jim Hill, Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers (Retired). Born 18 May 1931. Died 16 November 2016.