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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.

David was born in north London. His family moved when he was an infant to Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, from where his parents travelled into London for work. His mother, Frances (nee Schlesinger), ran a social club and his father, Arnold, worked for the family firm, Ripolin, the first commercial producer of enamel paint. At Bedales school in Hampshire, David acquired longstanding interests in carpentry and sailing, and he built his first boat – the first of three he constructed – at the age of 16.

He studied engineering at Imperial College, London, and then served on a minesweeper during his national service in the Royal Navy. After early jobs at the National Hydraulics Research Station, Wallingford, and at Dungeness Power Station, in 1962 he joined Lewis & Duvivier, Consulting Engineers, in London, as a senior engineer. In 1987 he became a partner, and from 1987 until 1998 was a consultant and director, by which time the firm had become Posford Duvivier.

Early in his career, he could be glimpsed in Brighton, dropping oranges down manholes to see where they would re-emerge in the sea, part of his research for a new outfall. He also played a key role in designing Brighton marina, one of the world’s largest, which opened in 1979. He sketched its basic shape, he said, on a napkin over lunch with the developer.

Later, he worked abroad, particularly in Hong Kong, where he was involved in a major waste water treatment project in the late 1980s. It cleaned up the colony’s iconic, but severely polluted, Victoria Harbour so successfully that the annual Cross Harbour Race, one of Asia’s biggest swimming events, was able to resume in 2011 after many years when sewage had made it too dangerous to hold.

In later years, wood replaced concrete as his favourite material. He was happiest on his lathe in the workshop of his garden in Teddington, Middlesex, where the sweet smell of sawdust mingled with the smoke from his favourite pipe. A constant stream of tables, wardrobes and fireplaces, all ingeniously designed, emerged to embellish the homes of relatives and friends.

David was a great raconteur who retained his prodigious memory until his final days, and his patience in explaining structures to the mechanically challenged was limitless. He was delighted on a family holiday in Dorset when all his eight grandchildren sat down to picnic on a random groyne, not knowing that he had constructed it.

In 1958, he married Martine Jellinek. She survives him, along with their children, Daniel, Rachel, Tom and Jessica, his grandchildren, a great-granddaughter, Sid, and his siblings, Chris and Nick.