Anthony Hilton: Time to engineer some recognition

We don't make enough fuss about the things we are good in this country and we do nothing like enough to celebrate our engineers, which is why on Thursday I was particularly pleased to be invited to present an award in the magnificent Great Room of the Institute of Civil Engineers.

The ceremony was designed to celebrate the best of civil engineering in London – which most of us take for granted or don't even think about. Thus the awards covered the distinctly unglamorous but technically brilliant repairs to Hammersmith flyover, the invisible upgrade of Tottenham Court Road tube station, the brilliant design of the Place above London Bridge station, or in the case of the Evening Standard Award, presented by its readers, the glamour of the Emirates cable car across the Thames.

We know the architects who design our buildings, but few of us could name the engineers behind them. If re-balancing the economy means more exposure for them it wins my vote.