Engineering Matters

Monitoring and maintaining an entire rail network can be costly, slow and, for those working on the track, very dangerous. Specialised trains were developed that could be mounted with sensors for collecting data on track gauging and track condition, however these couldn’t be mounted together. In this episode we look into the development of RILA...

The post #303 Gathering data at the speed of a train: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Health & Safety Gold Champion – Fugro RILA first appeared on Engineering Matters.

From habitat destruction, to use of pesticides, the arrival of invasive species and the growing impact of climate change, life, in all shapes and sizes, is fighting to survive. To protect the world’s biodiversity, first we have a better understanding of what and where that biodiversity is. In this episode we delve into iNaturalist, the...

The post #302 Conservation, Community and AI: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Community Gold Champion — iNaturalist first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the early 1900s Sydney was transformed by its first electric lighting system, which was so bright compared to gas lamps it was hailed as “turning night into day”. The network did much more than just light up the streets. It democratised power, electrifying communities, homes and businesses for the first time. The system, designed by...

The post #301 Electrifying Sydney: Transformational Energy Systems  first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Governments and businesses around the world have made commitments to achieve Net Zero by the middle of the century. This will require engineering innovation, and changes to practices, standards and regulations, across the generation, transmission, storage and transport segments. In this episode we explore these challenges and how they intersect.  The IET’s Powering Net Zero...

The post #300 Bonus: Powering Net Zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Thames had been for thousands of years London’s main route to the sea. But it is also an obstacle. The last crossing east of London is the bridge and tunnel at Dartford, and this is often congested. But a new crossing has been proposed further down the river. Throughout its planning, the focus has...

The post #299e Highways UK Live – A Legacy of Excellence first appeared on Engineering Matters.

National Highways has adopted clear net zero targets: its own operations will be carbon free by 2030; those of contractors on its roads by 2040; and of road users by 2050. The challenge will be meeting those goals, while also fulfilling its mission of getting drivers where they need to go, safely and efficiently. The...

The post #299d Highways UK Live – The Journey to Net Zero and Resilience first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 2024, National Highways completely closed parts of the M25, London’s orbital motorway. This blockage in the arterial system of the UK economy wasn’t a mistake. Instead, it was an example of meticulously planned surgery, performed by experts. In the previous episode of this mini-series, recorded live at Highways UK, we saw how data is...

The post #299c Highways UK Live – Next Generation Asset Management first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As an engineer, it is easy to think of roads as a challenge to be solved. Many of the innovations we will discuss in this mini-series will have a real impact on the safety, efficiency, and environmental impact of roads. But roads should be thought of as a service, not as an end in themselves....

The post #299b Highways UK Live – Roads Reimagined first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Why should we be thinking about roads as a service, not just an engineering challenge? What does it mean for a road to be a computer wrapped in asphalt? How can we use data from cars, highway assets, and even the road itself, to plan maintenance with minimal disruption to road users? How can roads...

The post #299a Highways UK Live – The Future of Highways – Mini-series Preview first appeared on Engineering Matters.

We should all want to build workplaces where everyone feels safe and included. But how can we do that when we don’t know what everyone needs? How can we make sure that we understand our colleagues and potential recruits, and provide them with the tools they need to be welcomed, and to be successful? Engineering...

The post #298 Making Everyone Welcome in Construction: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Diversity & Inclusion Gold Champion — EKFB first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 1985 diver Henri Cosquer discovered a submerged cave entrance in the Mediterranean near Marseilles. Exploring over the next six years he discovered a chamber filled with prehistoric art. Conditions in the caves and the submerged passages leading to it are extremely dangerous: three divers lost their lives exploring the caves. Efforts to map the...

The post #297 Revisited: A Deep Dive Into the Past first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The North Sea’s natural conditions, with shallow waters and strong winds, make it ideal for wind farms. But, these same factors pose challenges for construction. To meet ambitious Net Zero targets, improving the speed and efficiency of installing wind farm foundations is critical. At the same time, these works must be carried out safely, without...

The post #296 A Safer, Faster, Way to Build Offshore Wind first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The first stable atom to form after the Big Bang was hydrogen. Transformed into other atoms through stellar nuclear fusion, it is the foundation of all matter. Bound with other elements in water and hydrocarbons, it is the basis for all life, and the fuel of the industrial revolution. But can it also be the...

The post #295 Decision Time for the Hydrogen Economy first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On Coire Glas, in the remote Scottish Highlands, geologists and engineers are developing a vision of Scotland’s energy future. SSE Renewables plans the first pumped hydro storage facility in the UK for decades here, taking advantage of the unique and awe inspiring landscape. But first, they need to understand conditions on and in the ground....

The post #294 A View of the Future from Coire Glas first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For 70% of the world’s population, doing the laundry means hours of difficult manual washing. It was this fact that led Nav Sawhney to leave his job as a design engineer at Dyson and try to come up with a way to fix this problem. After six different design iterations, Nav and his team at...

The post #293 Cleaning clothes and changing lives: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Community Gold Champion — The Washing Machine Project first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How should local and regional leaders encourage investment in their communities? Around the world, cities struggle with a legacy of industrial decline. In England, devolution of planning policy to mayoral combined authorities has allowed for regions like Greater Manchester to outpace national growth. But within regions, local areas can themselves fall behind, and require a...

The post #292 Place is the Space for Growth first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Project managers have traditionally measured the viability of a project design or materials choice as a triangle, balancing cost, scope and performance. With the addition of carbon, this triangle becomes a three-sided pyramid, with four considerations each interacting with the others.  Materials suppliers and project designers now have a wealth of carbon cutting innovations available...

The post #291 Making the Case for Cutting Carbon first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Formula Student is Europe’s top educational motorsport competition, with students and teams from all over the world coming to compete. The competition is integrated into engineering degree courses, allowing students to take what they are learning in the classroom and lab, into the real world. It tests both engineering skills, and the project management that...

The post #290 Racing for Innovation: Inside Formula Student first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Lean production techniques have become common across heavy industry. They cut resource use, and promote quality assurance. They were inspired by shelf stocking techniques used in US grocery stores. But can they now be turned to the start of the grocery supply chain, farming itself? That is the goal of Engineering Matters Awards Sustainability Gold...

The post #289 Bringing lean production to agriculture: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Sustainability Gold Champions — Intelligent Growth Solutions first appeared on Engineering Matters.

We can only efficiently reduce those things that we can measure. The Whole Life Carbon Assessment standard, produced by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), established a method for assessing the carbon impact of buildings. Its updated version, which came into effect in July, expanded its scope to include infrastructure, and was designed to...

The post #288 Counting carbon costs of the world’s infrastructure: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Net Zero Gold Champion – Whole Life Carbon Assessment, 2nd edition first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Engineers Without Borders UK People Design Challenge is a year long challenge that is part of many UK engineering students’ degrees. For this episode we went to Stoller Hall in Manchester to cover the Design Challenge final. The design challenge each year focuses on a new community, and puts them at the centre of...

The post #287 Engineers Without Borders: The Design Challenge first appeared on Engineering Matters.

With the launch of robot taxis, we are already seeing autonomously controlled devices operating alongside humans in the public realm. As AI improves it will become embedded in our physical environment, in factories and construction sites, and in our streets and homes. In episode 267, we talked to Darren Martin about the importance of considering...

The post #286 AI In the Real World first appeared on Engineering Matters.

What does it take to win at the Olympics? For Pierre Engel, chief engineer at ArcelorMittal, victory took years of experience, precision, and collaboration. He was aided by kit made entirely of a novel material—low carbon recycled steel. Pierre’s challenge shared much with those faced by Olympians. But he wasn’t skipping rope to keep himself...

The post Bonus: Engineering a Low Carbon Paris Olympics first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The UK is a global leader when it comes to the development of offshore wind energy. Despite past government bans on onshore wind development, the UK was able to continue developing its wind energy portfolio by going out to sea. The UK now generates over a quarter of its electricity from wind, with a significant...

The post #285 Delivering the Floating Offshore Wind Revolution first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When the Queensway Tunnel opened on 18th July 1934 King George V declared it a miracle. At 3.4km long and with a 13.4m internal diameter it was the world’s longest subaqueous tunnel and the largest municipal engineering project that had ever been undertaken in the UK. The project pushed the boundaries of engineering design and...

The post #284 Queensway Tunnel: The Miracle Under the Mersey first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In every home, ancient technologies lurk, threatening fire and ruin. While many devices—lights, TVs, and hard drives, for example—have adopted solid state technologies, power bricks still use ageing electromechanical systems. AmberSemi’s AC Direct DC Enabler is a fabless semiconductor system that replaces these bricks. At home, that means smaller, safer ways of connecting DC devices...

The post #283 Power, without the power brick: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Net Zero Gold Champion AmberSemi first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Can an ancient technology help spin up the renewables revolution? Dumarey—formerly Punch—Flybrid is doing just that, with its flywheel-based technology. In this episode, one of a series this summer, we look at their winning entries to the Engineering Matters Awards. On construction sites, power supply must be shaped around the peak demands of heavy equipment....

The post #282 Spinning up the renewables revolution: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Gold Champion — Dumarey first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The adventures of astronauts have inspired the dreams of many young people. But once those dreams collide with the reality of years of demanding training and study, they often fade. Today, space is about much more than high profile crewed missions. In the UK alone, tens of thousands of workers will be needed by the...

The post #281 A rocket in the high street: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Inclusion Gold Champion — Space for Everyone first appeared on Engineering Matters.

We delve into the critical role of the built environment in addressing the climate emergency, and how our Engineering Matters Awards Net Zero champion the Built Environment Carbon Database (BECD) is helping decarbonise the industry. Created by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS), the BECD is a...

The post #280 Measuring carbon in materials and projects: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Net Zero Champion — BCIS Built Environment Carbon Database first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The concept of intersection has given society a new way to understand identity. It has profound implications for how we understand ourselves and others in our workplaces. For engineers, it can inform how projects are designed, and how they meet the needs of diverse users. The concept was developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and draws on...

The post #279 Intersection, Identity, and Engineering first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Around the world, 8% of CO2 emissions come from the production of concrete, and 90% of those emissions come from the production of cement. This episode highlights the groundbreaking work of Engineering Matters Awards Gold Champion Seratech, a company pioneering the use of carbon capture technology in concrete production.  Their innovative process uses the abundant...

The post #278 Capturing carbon with concrete: Engineering Matters Awards 2024 Innovation Gold Champion Seratech first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The race to hit Net Zero targets will require an unprecedented surge in innovation. As Dame Laura Sandys, CBE, explains, energy systems will be reshaped, with a few hundred players in the market replaced by millions of actions and assets in a distributed system. These will necessitate not just physical changes to how we generate,...

The post #277 The Race to Net Zero – Innovation at Pace first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Cone Penetration Testing is a conceptually simple technology first developed in the Netherlands almost a century ago, but is still a critical component in the geotechnical toolkit. Now far more accurate and capable than early cones, modern equivalents are being deployed to solve some of the most pressing challenges, within the Dutch lowlands and far...

The post #276 A Deep Understanding of the Ground Beneath Our Feet first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For any military operation the objectives of the mission are absolutely paramount. Failure is not an option. The team is motivated to achieve a common goal, often working under extreme pressure, pulling together to overcome challenges, paying attention to detail and always prioritising the objectives of the mission. In this way veterans have a lot...

The post #275 Serving Countries to Serving Communities first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Dar es Salaam is one of the world’s fastest growing cities. In the 1970s, it was home to less than one million people. Today, it has a population of more than five million people, and by 2035 it is projected to have more than 13 million residents. The city sits on a natural harbour, the...

The post #274 Seeing the Future of a City first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode, we delve into the dynamic world of Power Electronics, Machines, and Drives (PEMD), exploring its pivotal role in shaping the future of energy systems and sustainability efforts.  PEMD technology plays a critical role in advancing electrification and decarbonisation efforts worldwide. With PEMD technology enabling the integration of renewable energy sources, improving energy...

The post #273 The Core Technologies of a New Power System first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In late 1973 the UK’s Central Electricity Generating Board gained parliamentary approval to build the largest and most difficult pumped storage hydroelectric power station in its history. It was the largest civil engineering contract ever awarded by the government and became the biggest construction project in Europe. Engineering teams had to burrow 750m deep into...

The post #272 Designing Dinorwig: Inside Electric Mountain first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On the receiving end of among of the worst natural disasters in modern history, while being blessed with some of the most abundant natural resource reserves, and a developed economy, Australia sits in a unique position with regards to climate change. Many eyes are on the country as it looks to maintain the grid resilience...

The post #271 Pumped Storage: Australia tackles Intermittency first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the UK, over a quarter of a million kilometers of road have been laid. From motorways and A-roads to small country lanes, every kilometer of construction comes with a big carbon cost, emitting up to 2,600 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per kilometer. Over the last decade investment into new material technology and machinery has...

The post #270 A Blueprint for Low Carbon Roads first appeared on Engineering Matters.

It will be just as important to upgrade pipeline networks for the energy transition, as it is the electric grid. These will carry carbon dioxide and hydrogen, along with ammonia and biogas. They will enable carbon capture, local hydrogen for fuel intensive industry and transport, and for export. Governments around the world have struggled to...

The post #269 The Pipeline to Net Zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

HS2 is one of the most complex and challenging railway scheme the UK has ever undertaken. As such, it has been generating vast amounts of data across the board. Every geological survey, every design, every site, every environmental survey, all generating more and more data. So with all this data, what do you do with...

The post Learning Legacy Podcast – Episode 5: How to Swim in a Sea of Data first appeared on Engineering Matters.

HS2 is focused not only on safety, but on overall health and wellbeing on all employees and contractors. Identifying long term risks to wellbeing is a challenge within any industry. It’s a particular problem on construction sites, where people often move between projects and sites. Episode 4 dives into some of the innovations and technology...

The post Learning Legacy Podcast – Episode 4: Being Safe and Inclusive Every Step of the Way first appeared on Engineering Matters.

HS2’s place within the current climate and environment has always been its top priority. Once operational, the British-built bullet trains will provide zero-carbon journeys between the UK’s two largest cities, Birmingham and London. Episode 3 explores how HS2’s railway assets have been designed from the start with climate change resilience in mind, as well as...

The post Learning Legacy Podcast – Episode 3: Reducing and Reusing first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Design not only encapsulates the creativity and innovation of new products, but is the main source of information for construction to take place.  Episode 2 of the Learning Legacy Podcast takes a look at the design stages of stations and tunnel portals and encapsulating the importance of finding new methods of work and finding the...

The post Learning Legacy Podcast – Episode 2: The Blueprint and the Real Thing first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The concept of the Learning Legacy programme has been around for longer than you might think. Starting at London 2012, collating and sharing knowledge, innovation, good practice and lessons learned from major projects has developed in a number of ways to get to where we currently reside. In this first episode we’ll take a look...

The post Learning Legacy Podcast – Episode 1: Building a Learning Legacy first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Timekeeping has been a pursuit fraught with challenges throughout history. From ancient sundials to mechanical clocks, humanity has continuously sought methods to measure time with greater accuracy. Technology has given us new ways to measure time, but also demands more accurate synchronisation. Time synchronisation stands as a linchpin in modern technology, ensuring coherence and accuracy...

The post #268 Mastering Time: The Challenge of Time Synchronisation first appeared on Engineering Matters.

With the launch of ChatGPT, the power of generative AI has captured public attention. Systems like this can not only work through millions of options, like earlier chess-playing supercomputers, but develop original ideas that might not occur to humans, used to working within proven traditional approaches. New techniques of advanced information processing like this, promise...

The post #267 AI and Humanity, with Darren Martin first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Cities around the world face a housing crisis. In countries like the UK, local authorities struggle to finance projects and to find space for development. In faster growing and younger cities, it can be a challenge to ensure services and infrastructure are developed at the same pace as new housing. Urban development requires a clear...

The post #266 Building Communities Together first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Sixty years ago a civil engineer called John Bartlett of Mott, Hay & Anderson had a revolutionary idea. He noticed that bentonite clay could be used in a slurry to stabilise the face of tunnels during excavation. This could prevent non-cohesive, water bearing soils from collapsing inwards making excavation safer and cheaper.   The first...

The post #265 Tunnelling Innovation: Inventing the Bentonite Shield first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Social Value is a term that has been used to mean the additional benefits a company can provide to wider society beyond their business as usual. In the built environment, where infrastructure projects can already lead to negative consequences for local communities, considering how a company or project can provide real opportunities and benefits to...

The post #264 Finding Career Pathways into Social Value first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Digitalisation is changing every part of the economy. Modern mobile cranes have been developed based on some of the most fundamental concepts in engineering, many of which were first described by Archimedes. But here too, advances in sensors, computing power, and data transfer have been transformational. What can this meeting of modern and ancient tell...

The post #263 The Tipping Point first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #262 The Engineering Matters Awards – Net Zero, part 3 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #261 The Engineering Matters Awards – Net Zero, part 2 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #260 The Engineering Matters Awards – Net Zero, part 1 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #259 The Engineering Matters Awards – Innovation, part 3 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #258 The Engineering Matters Awards – Innovation, part 2 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #257 The Engineering Matters Awards – Innovation, part 1 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #256 The Engineering Matters Awards – Environment first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #255 The Engineering Matters Awards – Sustainability, part 2 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #254 The Engineering Matters Awards – Sustainability first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #253 The Engineering Matters Awards – Community first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #252 The Engineering Matters Awards – Health and Safety first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

The post #251 The Engineering Matters Awards – Diversity and Inclusion first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The use of “The Observational Method” could be one of the best kept secrets of the engineering world. Time and time again it has been used to deliver world leading projects safely and cost effectively. In some cases it has been the only way forward when other methods have failed. The powerful methodology has been...

The post #250 The Observational Method – Engineering’s Best Kept Secret first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The modern world is bound together with cables. As our economy moves to the cloud, the vast majority of data traffic passes through subsea cables. As we transition to renewable energy, hundreds of kilometres of cabling are needed within each wind farm, and to connect wind farms to the shore. When the first cables were...

The post #249 The Cables That Bind Our World Together first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Are there really bodies buried in the Hoover Dam? Was the hard hat really invented here in 1931? And why was it originally called Boulder Dam? In this episode, first aired in 2019, we explore and uncover the secrets of one of the greatest engineering projects ever built. The unique and formidable Hoover Dam. Learn...

The post #248 Revisited: Secrets of the Hoover Dam first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this podcast we go back in time to the invention of cathodic protection 200 years ago by President of the Royal Society Sir Humphry Davy. Initially applied to ships and pipelines, Mott MacDonald has spent decades pioneering its use on civil infrastructure designing systems for bridges and buildings around the world. This innovative thinking...

The post #247 Saving Structures with Cathodic Protection first appeared on Engineering Matters.

From tireless assembly lines in bustling factories to the delicate precision of diamond cutting, robots are transforming industries by becoming superhuman coworkers. But what if we shrunk these tireless partners down to the size of a grain of rice? Enter the realm of microrobots, where the boundaries of automation shrink to the scale of a...

The post #246 Tiny Robots, Big Moves: The Basics of Microrobot Actuation first appeared on Engineering Matters.

What would it mean to be able to look at a bag of concrete, and see its embodied carbon? That’s the goal of the new benchmark rating scheme for concrete, developed by the UK Low Carbon Concrete Group. It will allow suppliers, contractors and developers to consider the carbon footprint of projects, alongside cost and...

The post #245 Transparent Concrete first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Post the industrial revolution the UK’s waterways became very polluted, but the last 30 years have seen a massive turnaround in the UK’s water quality. Since the pandemic wild swimming has had a boom in popularity, with the UK’s beaches, lakes and rivers becoming popular destinations for being in nature and going for a dip....

The post #244 Water Quality: Navigating Challenges in UK’s Wild Waters first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Virtual Reality has been steadily growing in the gaming market over the past few years, but now it could be about to change not how people play but how they work.  From the imaginative realms of science fiction to the cutting-edge developments of the 21st century, we explore the roots of VR, paying homage to...

The post #243 Virtual Reality: A New Vision for Construction first appeared on Engineering Matters.

It can seem, at times, as if we are drowning in a sea of waste, a great ocean of paper and tin, glass and plastic, all mixed together, and resistant to recycling and re-use. AMP Robotics build systems that cut through this complexity. Trained using millions upon millions of images, their robots can identify, pick,...

The post SHORT: Recycling, Without Waste first appeared on Engineering Matters.

It is vital that we limit the impact of climate change, through decarbonisation. But communities around the world are already experiencing harm, through floods, wildfires, and other climate-related catastrophes. We must also address these harms, mitigating them through increased resilience. Building better resilience cannot be left just to the state, or private sector industries like...

The post #242 Partnerships and Resilience first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Across the ocean there is an intricate relationship between human activity and marine biodiversity. The energy transition means a huge increase in the number of offshore wind turbines. As our oceans become increasingly intertwined with human activities, marine life faces an evolving challenge.  Extensive monitoring of biodiversity takes place during the pre-construction and construction phase,...

The post #241 Wind, Waves and Wildlife: Navigating Biodiversity in Offshore Wind first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The West Kentish Town Estate provides more than 300 flats to social housing tenants. Built in the 1960s, using a panel building system, it has provided generations of Londoners an affordable home, close to the heart of one of the world’s biggest cities. But today, it is not meeting the needs of local families. Homes...

The post #240 Saving Homes, Saving the Planet first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This week, we’re bringing you a guest episode from the Planet Beyond podcast. In this episode, Planet Beyond host Jon Baston-Pitt talks to Resilience Association vice chair Peter Power, about how organisations in the public and private sectors can develop a ‘resilience mindset’. We live in a world of unparalleled complexity and risk. The structure...

The post #239 The resilience mindset, on Planet Beyond first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For the last three summers, shire horses have been at work each Lammas Day, mowing the new wildflower meadow on the former lawn of King’s College, Cambridge. The meadow isn’t just a quaint call back to East Anglia’s past, but gives a glimpse of the future, as new regulations come into force that require measurable...

The post #238 A Greener More Pleasant Land first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Katie Kelleher, is a trailblazer in the construction industry. Her incredible story, from a career in recruitment to becoming a crane operator, defies gender stereotypes and highlights the importance of determination in breaking new ground. In this episode we hear Katie’s experiences working on high-risk construction projects, including the Thames Tideway and Crossail. She shares...

The post #237 Climbing the Ladder to Gender Equality first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a renowned professional organization at the forefront of advancing engineering and technology. The IET plays a pivotal role in fostering innovation, knowledge sharing, and networking within the engineering community, making it a cornerstone institution for professionals dedicated to shaping the future of technology. Becoming an IET fellow...

The post SHORT: Junade Ali – The Youngest Fellow at the IET first appeared on Engineering Matters.

RAAC, or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, enabled a boom in public building in post-war Britain. It allowed schools, hospitals and other services to be built safely and efficiently, giving working Britons services they had long been excluded from. It, and other manufactured building materials, formed the basis of what are now known as Modern Methods...

The post #236 RAAC: The Misunderstood Material? first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Hidden in the mountainous peaks of Snowdonia’s National Park is a clean source of energy storage that has been supporting the UK’s electricity grid since it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963. Ffestiniog was the UK’s first ever pumped storage hydropower project and it remains a critical part of today’s energy system....

The post #235 Ffestiniog: 60 Years of Pioneering Storage first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Around the world, engineers, project owners, and policymakers must make hard choices as they work to ensure our infrastructure is fit for the future. They must consider how climate change will impact those assets, and how those assets will help or hinder the energy transition. This week, with the UK’s political conference season in full...

The post Introducing: Connected Places first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For more than a century, the UK’s Rolls-Royce have designed power systems for cars and planes, ships and submarines. Today, they are developing a novel form of nuclear reactor, which will bring reliable power to the Moon, and green energy to some of the world’s furthest frontiers. The microreactors they are developing are tiny: terrestrial...

The post #234 Microreactors: From the Moon, to the ends of the Earth first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Dawlish sea wall, a historic and iconic structure, has long served as a critical link connecting South Devon and Cornwall to the rest of the UK. Its rich history and importance in facilitating transportation have made it a symbol of resilience. However, after a storm in 2014 the wall collapsed and left the train...

The post #233 Rebuilding the Dawlish Sea Wall first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Many organisations undervalue the role young employees can play, one in five UK employers outright refuse to hire from the 22-25 age group. However young employees can offer a different way of looking at problems and with an emerging skill gap across STEM industries, employing and training young people gives companies a chance to mould...

The post #232 Future of Technology and Engineering first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Governments and businesses around the world have made commitments to achieve Net Zero by the middle of the century. This will require engineering innovation, and changes to practices, standards and regulations, across the generation, transmission, storage and transport segments. In this episode we explore the challenges and how they intersect. The IET’s Powering Net Zero...

The post #231 Powering Net Zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In our increasingly complex and interconnected world, wars are fought not only on the battlefield, but within the infrastructure that supports our society. To address these challenges, engineers must adopt a ‘secure by design’ approach that identifies risks from the outset. Just as cyberattacks extend threats to a new digital domain, so too is climate...

The post #230 National Security’s New Frontlines first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Ever since the first computer chip was created the size of transistors on chips has been getting smaller and smaller. Gordon Moore, who went on to co-found Intel, predicted the doubling of number of transistors on a chip would double every two years, over the last 60 years this has been true but only thanks...

The post #229 Chip Manufacturing and the World’s Most Complex Machine first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For consumers, and for many businesses, the road to Net Zero is simple: replace fossil fuels with electricity, source the electricity from renewable sources, and use it as efficiently as possible, But this isn’t a road every business can follow. Some have energy requirements so intense, that they cannot be easily powered from the grid....

The post #228 Hydrogen, and the road to Net Zero building materials first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The De Havilland Beaver is a single pilot, seven passenger piston airplane that’s an icon of Canadian aviation. It has been out of production for over 50 years but is still a popular plane for short flights to Canada’s most remote areas. The De Havilland Beaver now finds itself on the cutting edge of aviation....

The post #227 Electrifying the Skies: Harbour Air’s Green Revolution first appeared on Engineering Matters.

What can an engineer or town planner learn from a computer game Viking? In this episode, we look at how one design team is using real time simulations, or gaming engines, to develop accessible ways of communicating engineering proposal to the public. Games such as Valheim challenge players to survive in a world of richly...

The post #226 Gaming: A New Engine for Engagement first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Saudi Arabia has set out on a journey. This historic land is today home to a young country: a quarter of the population are under 15; more than 40% are younger than 25; and 90% are under 55 years old. The country aims to build a diversified economy that will provide new opportunities for this...

The post #225 Saudi Arabia: Preserving the past, building the future first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Power companies like National Grid Electricity Distribution, have used helicopters to monitor power lines for decades. Once, an inspector would check each component visually from the helicopter. Today, they are backed up by a data specialist, who manages the acquisition of LIDAR and other data. The ability of these companies to acquire detailed data over...

The post #224 Power lines, helicopters, and data analysis first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The operations and maintenance (O&M) sector has changed significantly since the inception of the 3P, or public private partnership, model in the 1990s. Once, these contracts merely assigned O&M responsibilities. Today, clients want suppliers to help them implement specific social and environmental values.  This is changing the way O&M contractors work. They must collaborate closely...

The post #223 Data and collaboration, operations and maintenance first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In episode #221, Engineering Matters looked at a new way of manufacturing feedstocks for plastics. This approach will eliminate the use for oil products, instead making use of plant-based materials, which will also help remove carbon from the atmosphere. But eliminating the use of finite oil resources is only one part of the circular economy....

The post #222 Revisited: The future of 3D printing first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The world consumes 4.25 billion tonnes of oil every year. Over half of the oil drilled out of the ground goes towards transport, but the entire sector is moving to decarbonise. However even if the transport sector no longer requires oil, many industries across the economy will still be reliant on extracting fossil fuels. In...

The post #221 Turning plants into plastics first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Buildings and the construction industry account for 39% of global carbon emissions: 28% from materials and operational emissions, and 11% from construction operations. One of the main sources of those emissions during building works, is the use of diesel generators to power heavy equipment, such as tower cranes. But this equipment only needs high levels...

The post #220 The End of the Diesel Generator? first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Can engineers help to build peace? Can the solutions engineers develop in places of conflict, contribute to the development of low carbon? They can. And Engineering Matters listeners can help with this important work. Over the past decade, many of Syria’s urban areas have been ravaged by aerial bombardment and shelling by artillery. It is...

The post #219 Syria: Rising from the rubble first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. From jobs and skills to Learning Legacy case studies, the HS2 project continues to provide good practice, innovation and lessons learned. HS2 isn’t just about building a new piece of infrastructure,...

The post Episode Twelve, How to build a Railway: Leaving a legacy first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. With any project, health and safety plays an important role. From working at height to operating heavy machinery, there is always a risk towards the health and wellbeing of workers, and...

The post Episode Eleven, How to build a Railway: Safe at Heart first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. Climate change presents unprecedented challenges; the actions we take today will fundamentally affect our lives and the lives of future generations. How we travel – and how we build our infrastructure...

The post Episode Ten, How to build a Railway: Keeping things clean – our journey to net zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. In this episode, we explore how it all fits together – how we integrate our rail systems. Rail travel has come a long way over the years. Now, with advances in...

The post Episode Nine, How to build a Railway: From Track to The Cloud – the Layers of Railway first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. This episode of the HS2 podcast series is all about the journey, and the destination. Stations sit at the heart of any railway system. They receive passenger flows from the railway...

The post Episode Eight, How to build a Railway: Our next stop is… first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. This episode of the HS2 podcast series goes back above ground to explore the design and construction of bridges, with a specific focus on HS2’s iconic Colne Valley Viaduct. Good infrastructure...

The post Episode Seven, How to build a Railway: Building Bridges first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. The latest instalment of HS2’s podcast delves into the fascinating world of tunnelling.  As Phase One of the railway winds its way from Birmingham to London, it passes through an ever-changing landscape....

The post Episode Six, How to build a Railway: Going underground first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. We are always looking towards new methods and technologies to help us work smarter, safer and more efficiently. Construction and engineering is no different. This episode of How to build a...

The post Episode Five, How to build a Railway: Opportunity for Innovation first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. As the largest single environmental project in the UK, protecting and enhancing the environment has always been an integral part of the HS2 programme. Since 2009, every metre of the design has been carefully considered in navigating sites of natural significance. Episode four, ‘Creating the Green Corridor’, explores our endeavours to protect, replace and...

The post Episode Four, How to build a Railway: Creating the Green Corridor first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. Over 250 miles of new high speed railway is planned, with trains capable of speeds up to 225mph (360km/h), and linking the biggest cities in Scotland with Manchester, Birmingham and London....

The post Episode Three, How to build a Railway: Preparing the ground first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. This episode, ‘Unearthing History’, explores everything archaeology. HS2’s archaeology programme is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that will allow us to reveal over 10,000 years of British history. As Europe’s biggest dig, HS2’s...

The post Episode Two, How to build a Railway: Unearthing History first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. This episode focusses on why HS2 is needed, the historical context of our country’s railways, project progress so far and upcoming goals. Guests Starting back in the 1830’s, Bob sets the...

The post Episode One, How to build a Railway: The What and the Why of HS2 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Engineering Matters is celebrating its fifth anniversary this week. Podcast founders Bernadette Ballantyne and Jon Young, along with the rest of the Engineering Matters team, tell the story of the show’s creation and rapid growth, and share a behind-the-scenes look at how some of our favourite and most popular episodes have been put together. Engineering...

The post #218 Origin stories first appeared on Engineering Matters.

More and more of the economy is being powered by the grid and that trend will continue over the next few decades. At the same time countries are looking to reduce their reliance on coal and gas and use more renewables like solar and wind. Managing the transition to a green grid will require extensive...

The post #217 Managing the Energy Transition first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The next decade will see an unprecedented level of offshore energy construction. In order to achieve the 2035 emissions targets adopted by many governments, the offshore industry will need to build thousands of turbines. Each of these must be secured by appropriate foundations and anchors, often in unmapped areas of the seabed, much deeper than...

The post #216 Accelerating Offshore Wind Construction first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Waste is an integral part of the circular economy. It is, in many cases, simply a resource that is in the wrong place. But it can also be a nuisance, an eyesore or even a risk to health. In the UK, new regulations, and changes to ways some waste handling is allowed to take place,...

The post #215 Waste Goes Digital first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When a major public infrastructure project is announced often a brand new organisation is set up that is tasked with delivering the project. These organisations can be very small and not have the experience delivering a major project that only a few people have. In the past organisations like these have hired a programme or...

The post #214 Delivering a Megaproject first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Just over a week ago, SpaceX successfully launched one of the largest rockets ever, a key step in humanity’s journey beyond the earth. While the rocket underwent a ‘rapid unplanned disassembly’ shortly after launch, it gave the company’s engineers a wealth of data for future launches. The same company also owns the world’s largest constellation...

The post #213 Revisited: Positioning Satellites in New Space first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The brewing industry has become a testing ground for the energy transition. Many drinkers want to drink responsibly: not just to protect their own health, but the health of the planet. Brewers large and small are taking innovative approaches to their energy use. In Samlesbury, AB InBev has started working with Protium, who will fund,...

The post #212 Turning beer green first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Britains biodiversity has been declining sharply over the last 50 years. We are now one of the most nature depleted nations in the world. Despite legislation and efforts to stem the tide of wildlife population decline, nothing has worked. Some Wildlife Trusts and organisations now support a more nature based approach to wildlife and land...

The post #211 Rewilding the UK first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Last week the UK government announced plan to ban the sale of wet wipes to deal with the problem of fatbergs in sewers. This week we’re rerunning an episode from 2019 where we venture down into the sewer system to see the largest fatberg in Europe. Underneath cities all over the UK subterranean mountains of...

The post #210 Revisited: Return of the Fatbergs first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In a world of complex supply chains, how can owners secure their assets against risks like climate change and disease lockdowns? By using the concept of resilience, owners can form strategic asset management plans, which balance the level of service required, against the cost of that service, while paying attention to all the risks faced:...

The post #209 Asset Management, Resilience, and Climate Change first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The first edition of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Whole Life Carbon Assessment for the Built Environment, published in 2017, is a professional statement that establishes a methodology for calculating the carbon cost of buildings, and now infrastructure, from construction, through use, to end-of-life. The guidelines already allow users to make finely tuned...

The post #208 Counting Carbon Costs in the Built Environment first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For 50 years the North Sea has been critical to European energy. Technology and skills developed over decades enabled the extraction of oil and gas in some of the most extreme and hazardous conditions on the planet.  As the world transitions away from oil and gas, the North Sea will again be a critical source...

The post #207 Revolution in the North Sea first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Swedish city of Gothenburg is celebrating its 400 year anniversary in 2023 and as part of the celebrations the city is undergoing a construction boom. For much of the city’s 400 year history, major construction projects have been very limited by the wet and weak ground conditions beneath the city. This means that Gothenburg,...

The post #206 The Giant Props of Gothenburg first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In recent decades, companies have moved manufacturing to countries offering low cost labour. Today, as they aim for Net Zero, they must also consider their carbon footprint. And that is almost impossible to do if raw materials are sourced from around the world, from countries with highly emitting energy systems and poor record keeping. Sam...

The post #205 The Green, Green, Shores of Home first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Engineering Matters and Reby Media team has been working on a new podcast series in partnership with HS2. How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line. The podcast series features industry experts and special guests giving their unique...

The post Introducing: How to Build a Railway first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Globally, the aviation industry accounts for 2.5% of all carbon emissions. The emission of other gases and particulates at altitude may make its warming impact even larger. Industry wide, manufactures, airlines and even airports, are all looking at how to bring in a new age of green plane technology, whether it’s hydrogen fuel cell, battery...

The post #204 Creating Green Airports of the Future first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In light of the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, this we are revisting the story of Nooraullah Kuchai. Noorullah is a civil engineer, a humanitarian and a refugee twice over. He lived in a tent in a Pakistani refugee camp for a decade and is now dedicating his life to helping people who have...

The post #203 Revisited: Crisis Shelter for Mass Displacement first appeared on Engineering Matters.

What do we do after a structure fails? Often, we go to court. Courts cannot make bereaved families, or those injured, whole. They cannot repair damaged structures. But they can go some way to making right some of the harms suffered. Forensic engineers, or building pathologists, are often called on to offer expert witness testimony...

The post #202 After the Collapse first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 2019 Tarmac announced their Innovation Challenge, for companies to propose new technologies to help Tarmac decarbonise. Over the next three years in partnership with Renault Trucks and TVS Interfleet they developed the first electric concrete mixer to be used in the UK. Through the process of designing and building a first of its kind...

The post #201 Creating the UK’s First eMixer first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Robots are increasingly able to take on any repeatable task in industry, and are used in many dull, dirty or dangerous tasks. But their deployment for highly variable tasks remains limited. They are now being used in nuclear decommissioning, to sort, cut, and repack waste storage skips. And this could serve as a testing ground...

The post #200 Nuclear Robots on the Cutting Edge first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How can we maintain reliable power through the energy transition, while still making significant cuts to energy emissions? Carbon capture and storage promises an answer, but much groundwork must be done to bring this potential to life. SSE recently received approval to build a new gas power plant at Keadby, in Lincolnshire, which could be...

The post #199 Pioneering Carbon Capture for Thermal Power first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Getting to net zero emissions requires a paradigm shift in the way that we think and in the way that we do business says Dr Kim Yates from Mott MacDonald. In this episode we explore how collaboration between climate resilience, decarbonisation and improving biodiversity along with systems thinking could deepen efforts to reduce global carbon...

The post #198 Collaboration: The Net Zero Trilogy first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 1992 rolls Royce helped to fund a new technology centre at the University of Birmingham which began a long relationship between the manufacturer and the university. Over the last 30 years research into material sciences for aviation have led to important safety and efficiency gains in plane performance. In 2022 the University of Birmingham...

The post #197 On the Cutting Edge of Aviation first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The US National Ignition Facility recently announced that it had achieved a milestone in the development of fusion technology, producing more energy from a fusion process than that put into the reactor directly by the lasers that control the process. While the NIF is not designed to research power generation—it has its roots in the...

The post #196 Back to the Future of Fusion first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Every December in London a magnificent Christmas tree is unveiled in Trafalgar Square. It is an annual gift from the people of Norway to the people of Britain that began 75 years ago. The origins of this tradition lie in the darkest days of the Second World War, and a British naval hero who undertook...

The post #195 The Journey of the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The UK government recently confirmed its support for Sizewell C. Getting to this point, and planning how thousands of construction crew and millions of tonnes of materials and plant will get to the site, has taken a decade of work.  Nuclear power plants like Sizewell C are almost always built in rural locations, by the...

The post #194 Nuclear Power Connections first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This year saw infrastructure resilience included in the Carbon Crunch programme for the first time. It is recognition that our infrastructure is being exposed to greater environmental risks than before, and so the impacts on people and communities will be even more profound. If construction does not properly consider the growing risks of rising floods...

The post #193 Carbon Crunch (Part 2): Resilience in a Changing World first appeared on Engineering Matters.

It has been nearly 10 years since the world first recorded atmospheric carbon above 400 parts per million. That year, 2013, also marked the first edition of the Carbon Crunch event which brought together infrastructure professionals to discuss the issue of decarbonisation. A decade on and much has changed for the better; we have near-universal...

The post #193 Carbon Crunch (Part 1): The Decarbonisation Debate first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The deepest hole ever drilled drives 12.2km down below the border of Russia and Finland. The Kola Superdeep Borehole was an experiment to penetrate as deeply as possible into the Earth’s crust, but since 1995 it has been abandoned. Now a company believes that new technology will be able to drill to depths of 20km....

The post #192 Drilling Deep for Geothermal first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 1985 diver Henri Cosquer discovered a submerged cave entrance in the Mediterranean near Marseilles. Exploring over the next six years he discovered a chamber filled with prehistoric art. Conditions in the caves and the submerged passages leading to it are extremely dangerous: three divers lost their lives exploring the caves. Efforts to map the...

The post #191 A Deep Dive Into the Past first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For 200 years, towns and cities across the British regions developed specialised roles in the economy of empire. Mining towns and ports, potteries and steelmakers all made their own contribution to a global trade network, and local communities enjoyed jobs for life, with clear paths to entry. With the changing global order of the late...

The post #190 Regional Re-balancing first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How do we assess the environmental impact of construction materials? Some materials may enjoy a reputation as natural and sustainable. Timber, quite literally, grows on trees It is abundant, it captures carbon from the atmosphere, and at the end of its life can decompose naturally, leaving no harmful waste. But some of the highest value...

The post #189 Life Cycle Analysis of Construction Materials first appeared on Engineering Matters.

UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction estimates that over the past 20 years, 1.2 million people have been killed by more than 7,000 disasters. It estimates the economic damage at just under $3 trillion. It also found that when compared to the 1980s and 1990s, this impact has almost doubled. Countries are working to become...

The post #188 Data Analysis for Climate Resilience first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In Los Angeles only 3% of the population say they take public transit regularly, compared to 84% of residents who commute to work in their car every day. This results in huge amounts of traffic and air quality so bad that under public health requirements it’s illegal. LA Metro is making major investments to improve...

The post #187 Electrifying the Los Angeles Bus Fleet first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On 20 September 2006 Richard Hammond raced down the Elvington airfield in Vampire, the jet-powered dragster that still holds the British land speed record. Hammond was travelling at 288mph (464km/h) when one of the car’s tyres unexpectedly blew, flipping the vehicle onto its back. Although seriously injured, Hammond escaped with his life. The Vampire itself...

The post #186 Vampire: Resurrecting Britain’s Fastest Car first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Canada Line is North America’s most efficient commuter rail. Since it opened in 2009, they have operated with a system availability of 99.9% and a punctuality record of 99.8%. But now they have reached a crucial stage in the line’s lifespan. After 13 years, major maintenance and replacement operations will need to take place...

The post #185 Building Canada Line’s Digital Twin first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Net Zero is our 2050 ambition for society, but to make this a reality city must be held to a far higher standard. Our urban environments will need to become ‘carbon negative’ if we intend to mount a robust response to the climate emergency. New technologies and techniques are part of the solution. But there...

The post #184 The Future of Old Cities first appeared on Engineering Matters.

At the end of 2019 the Coronavirus pandemic began its global take-over, the world had to react fast to try and stop the spread. A project sprung up overnight, to create a megalab large enough to cope with never before seen testing requirements.  The project would be complex, intricate, and require a quick delivery. It...

The post #183 Testing Times: Building a Megalab first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As electricity grids around the world transition to using renewable energy resources, investment will need to be made in energy storage. When the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow there needs to be a way for the grid to be supplied with electricity. Currently pumped hydro storage is the main form of energy...

The post #182 Using Gravity to Store Energy first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When picturing the Arctic, people from warmer latitudes are likely to imagine frozen tundra and lonely steppe. Add global warming to this and the vision shifts to melting ice caps and desperate fauna. But the Arctic is much more than that. It is a region of community and a land of opportunity. With immense fisheries...

The post #181 The Foundations of a New Arctic first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For industries across the world to reach net zero they are going to rely on mining critical minerals to allow for the electrification of their vehicles and machines. This has caused a huge leap in demand for minerals like lithium, nickel and cobalt. Added to this, the mining industry itself is already a major polluter...

The post #180 Mining in a Net Zero World first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In July 2022 the UK burned as temperatures broke 40°C for the first time in recorded history. As each of us tried different approaches to dealing with the heat, trees offered respite for some astute Brits. In the immediate aftermath the UK Government announced £44 million in reforestation funding for this year. In appreciation of...

The post #179 Trees: Escaping the Heat first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Antarctica New Zealand runs a critical research hub on the volcanic Ross Island. Originally built in 1957, it consists of 12 buildings connected by walkways – none of which have been upgraded since the 1980s. To keep the important science going for the next 50 years a redevelopment was launched in 2017. However, building in...

The post #178 A Vision for a Modular Antarctica first appeared on Engineering Matters.

An era of tunnelling megaprojects has dawned as governments have invested in the underground the world over. Skills shortages are nothing new to the engineering world, but in some sectors, it is beginning to bite. One such area is surveying. In these situations, technology and collaborative ways of working can take the strain off an...

The post SHORT: Tunnelling on Target first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Founded in the late 1800s to supply coal to the Union Pacific Railroad, the town of Hanna, Wyoming has a proud place in the industrial story of the United States. It also has another legacy to contend with – Abandoned Mine Lands. Historical mining activities have left the region with voided geology and subsidence issues....

The post #177 The Abandoned Mine Lands of Wyoming first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In Bangalore, the high-tech heart of India, sits a centre of technology. A state-of-the-art engineering facility working on projects across the globe. In its time, the centre has transitioned from an offshore project design centre to the forefront of technological innovation in the company. Becoming a centre of excellence and pioneering digital innovation, this hub,...

The post #176 Bangalore and the Digital Transformation first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The UK’s roads are in increasing need of repair and local councils are facing a nine year long backlog of overdue road maintenance. However, with new technologies entering the road construction industry, future road maintenance and construction projects could be safer, greener and result in longer lasting roads. Tarmac is bringing together all the industry’s...

The post #175 Tarmac on the Future of Road Technology first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Buildings can use around three times as much energy as design models anticipate. This is an incredible figure and becomes a real problem when considered in context: real estate accounts for 39% of the UK’s total carbon. Around ¾ of that also comes from the operation phase. Part of the problem lies in the way...

The post #174 Closing the Building Performance Gap first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Denmark is embarking on the largest construction project in its history with the assembly of the first energy island in the North Sea. The 120,000sq.m site could serve as a hub for as many as 200 wind turbines, storing and supplying electricity to Denmark and its neighbours. The impact of greenhouse gases on our planet...

The post #173 Europe’s First Energy Island first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Norah Magero, the co-founder of Drop Access talks about her invention the Vaccibox. In Kenya a large majority of the population live in remote rural areas with often limited energy access. The Vaccibox is a solar powered vaccine fridge that allows for the safe transportation and storage of vaccines to remote areas. In this episode...

The post #172 Vaccibox: Revolutionising Kenya’s Vaccine Storage first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For most environments, disinfection has barely changed since the 1918 influenza outbreak; many of the same companies offer similar chemical products with which to douse surfaces. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic a startup decided to explore the use of ultraviolet light to disinfect surfaces, not just in high-end laboratories, but classrooms, bars, shops...

The post #171 Ultraviolet light: Preventing the Next Pandemic first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Although ‘pet food’ and ‘engineering’ may not immediately align in the mind, one supplier wanted to ensure its products were both sustainable and ethical; from certification to packaging, and from farm to bowl. To do this required a keen understanding of its supply chain and the impact its decisions would have on its carbon footprint....

The post #170 Pet Food vs Climate Change first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This week we are bringing you a guest episode from the Planet Beyond podcast. This is another podcast we produce, and is brought to you by Fugro. For much of history the seas have loomed impossibly large and untouchable. This perception is at odds with the vulnerability of ocean environments. Now, following decades of abuse...

The post #169 Ocean Science: Ten Years to Turn the Tide first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Supply chain disruptions that initially left companies entirely without critical materials have given way to inflation of shipping and production costs, shortages of skilled labour, and volatile prices for everything from plaster to electronics. Unpredictable and unreliable supply chains are a headache for anyone involved in project cost or schedule management, but for a property...

The post SHORT: Making the Big Decisions first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the 1970’s Dr Armand Feigenbaum coined the term ‘Hidden Factories’ to talk about the hidden part of organisations where as much 40% of production capability was lost through inefficiency. Finding these weak spots proved difficult until very recently. An exponential increase in data processing power has led to a fourth industrial revolution, or industry...

The post #168 Industry 4.0: Finding the Hidden Factory first appeared on Engineering Matters.

At its core, being an ally is about support, a willingness to learn about the struggles of others, take them on board and be an advocate for those people’s rights. This is an important part of a healthy business culture.  Given the current engineering skills gap, opening business to a wider pool of candidates through...

The post #167 Building Allyship first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As access to space has become less expensive, companies are moving to create an in-orbit servicing and manufacturing industry. In-orbit servicing, repairing existing spacecraft and satellites, has been taking place for many years but as we move beyond low earth orbit advanced robotics will be used to carry out these tasks rather than astronauts. Space...

The post #166 Space: The Robotic Age first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 2020 National Highways released their 2030/2040/2050 Net Zero plan. The plan laid out three main targets for reaching net zero, first cutting all their direct carbon emissions which includes lighting the network and all forms of corporate office emissions by 2030. Second is cutting all emissions from the network’s construction and maintenance by 2040,...

The post #165 A Road Map to Net Zero Highways first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the last century, the tides of conflict swirled around Europe as the world’s largest powers fought for dominance over air, land and sea. The North Sea was a critical theatre that could have determined the future direction of the planet in two World Wars. Since the guns fell silent in 1945, the North Sea...

The post #164 Under the North Sea: Threat and Promise first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For more than 40 years, The IET’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards have been celebrating the incredible women engineers working to improve our world and shape our future to help change the outdated perception that it’s an industry just for men. These awards are all about showcasing the best women engineering talent in...

The post SHORT: Engineering Winners first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Our world is becoming increasingly more virtual, promising new ways of relating to each other and of doing business. The benefits of this, however, are unclear. Virtual and augmented realities could amount to no more than Pokémon Go or Second Life, but they could accentuate the harms we already see online in ways no-one can...

The post #163 Nuclear Decommissioning with Data first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On concrete paved roads, cracks can be reflected up from the joints between paving sections, into the surface layer. These cracks can lead to further damage to the road structure, and require maintenance from road owners. But the latest road surfacing technology has been proven effective on Formula 1 tracks and airport runways around the...

The post #162 Smooth as Glass: The Road Ahead first appeared on Engineering Matters.

You have just arrived in a Biosafety Level 4 Containment Lab. These are the most secure laboratories built by human hands, and they are where scientists study the most dangerous pathogens. Containment is an absolute requirement and they are often in isolated locations. They are also extraordinarily intricate, complicated and expensive structures, that often require...

The post #161 The Net Zero Laboratory first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When an engineer has an idea that could change the world, the world might not immediately be ready for it. That is what Omer Keilaf realised in 2012 when he thought he could revolutionise LiDAR technology while watching an advert for the Xbox Kinect. At that time the world was interested in mobile phone technology,...

The post #160 Autonomous Driving: Solving the Lidar Challenge first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Once infrastructure projects pass a certain value, around 200 to 300 million dollars, data becomes a major challenge. There is no shortage of data in engineering and the complexity goes up exponentially. Data science is becoming increasingly important in an ever more complicated sector. Guests Tom Goldsmith, Product Manager – Lighthouse, Atkins Marianna Imprialou, Principal...

The post #159 Dealing with Data first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Potager Farm CEO Mario Gatineau grew up in the French countryside as the son of a beekeeper and botanist. When pesticides used in local farming killed around 80 percent of his father’s bees he dedicated himself to finding new environmentally sustainable ways to produce food. Today he is launching a vertical farm in the heart...

The post #158 Vertical Farming at Potager Farm first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The engineering industry is only as good as the talent it can attract and retain. In this Engineering Matters Short we follow the journey of a talented young engineer, who found herself unable to connect with an industry dominated by older white men. Now she is set to host the upcoming E&T Innovation Awards in...

The post SHORT: Celebrating the Work first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Standing on the cliffs of Ireland’s west coast you can feel the reason that Ireland generates more than 35% of its electricity from wind power. But what happens when the wind passes on its way east towards Great Britain? When conditions are poor for renewables, a high penetration in the electricity mix becomes a liability....

The post #157 Interconnectors: The Green Link to Ireland first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When it comes to adhering to standards, working within regulations, and ticking boxes, companies are pretty great. It’s how they are set up, and it is how they are used to thinking. But starting around 10 years ago, companies and organisations were asked to look at the world, and the work they do, in a...

The post #156 Social Value: How to get it Right first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Coral reefs are sometimes called the rainforests of the oceans and support an estimated 25% of all known marine species, but they, and the sponges that inhabit them, are unusually susceptible to changes in the waters and the local microbial community. Coral bleaching is just one of the negative effects of changing world. However, teams...

The post #155 Coral and the Hunt for a Cure first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This is the story of a structure so unique that there is nothing like it in the entire world. The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland is the only rotating boat lift ever built. Constructed in the late 1990s as part of the Millennium Link project to connect the Union Canal with the Forth and Clyde Canal...

The post #154 Falkirk Wheel: The Design Story first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In partnership with Tabsal SCL, Engineering Matters speaks with Javier Saldise about how his Spanish company is taking waste wood and transforming it into structural timber.

The post SHORT: Engineering Waste first appeared on Engineering Matters.

What if we could take the waste that no one wants, the kind of waste that is shoved into landfill and turn it into sustainable fuel? Thanks to developments in gasification technology this is now possible at a commercial scale. In this episode we visit the Varennes Carbon Recycling Plant to discover why engineers are...

The post #153 Recycling Carbon: Biofuels from Waste first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flee their country which is under attack by Putin’s Russia, we find that the number of forcibly displaced people is at an all-time high. This episode, first run in 2019 and created with Mott MacDonald at the UK Shelter Forum examines the issues affecting shelter provision for refugees. Original...

The post #152 Crisis Shelter Revisited first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this week’s episode we will learn about the technologies that have driven the development of electrification for a variety of well-known industrial OEM brands.  Electric motors, high-frequency battery chargers and motion controllers have made electric and hybrid vehicles more and more ubiquitous. And industry is just getting started. Guests Claes Avasjo, Executive Director, ZAPI...

The post #151 Electrification: the future of industry first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Green hydrogen, created from renewable energy resources, has been hailed as a panacea to decarbonisation of heat and fluctuation in natural gas prices. But the reality is that not every application will be either cost effective or practically viable. In this episode we explore the case for green hydrogen and find that its success is...

The post #150 Green Hydrogen: Creating the System first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the UK in 2020, 80% of freight was moved by road and 90% of passenger miles were travelled by road. It is considered a high-carbon form of transport today, but this is changing as new technology is rapidly making electric vehicles and alternative fuels more attractive.  With the decarbonisation of road transport, its popularity...

The post #149 Roads: Invention needs Ambition first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Predicting the future is difficult, every year would-be prophets fail to predict major events and over-eager journalists seize on the words of ancient mystics to fill column inches. But there are some people who need to be able to predict what society will need, up to a decade in advance. Developers of skyscrapers need to...

The post #148 Skyscrapers: Predicting the Future first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the summer of 2021 record rainfall overwhelmed river systems across Europe. People in the Limburg region of the Netherlands held their collective breath as water levels in the River Meuse rose. Floods in the 1990s had taught them what devastation flooding could bring. Fortunately, the government had already acted, investing in a unique and...

The post #147 Flooding: Making Space for Water first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The 2021 energy crisis saw coal power plants fire into life as natural gas prices spiralled and wind turbines stood idle.  The combination of circumstances emphasised the need for firm power that is also zero carbon. Fortunately, a quiet revolution has been underway in the nuclear industry as Small Modular Reactor (SMR) plans are maturing....

The post #146 Small Modular Reactors first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When Andrew Smyth turned the handle on his clockwork pies on Great British Bake Off in 2016, it brought together two disciplines that had never been combined before. Engineering and baking were combined in the glory of eight mechanised pies. For aerospace engineer Andrew this was just the beginning of a new career as a...

The post #145 Andrew Smyth – Engineering with Cake first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this first episode of the New Year, we are telling a story about renewal. A project in 1950s New Zealand called the Kaituna Cut re-diverted a river, draining wetlands to create pasture.  But working against nature can have negative consequences. The process caused the Maketū estuary to silt, and biodiversity to crash.  Now, following...

The post #144 Enhancing an Estuary, Restoring a River first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This week we bring you a guest episode from the Planet Beyond podcast. An adventurous spirit in people has made many successful organisations what they are today. To be truly great, we often find these people are guided by a moral compass, possessing core values that provide that relentless pointer to the right way, even...

The post #143 Learning From Adventure first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Humans can feel that we have built a world to live in that is above and apart from nature. We concrete the ground, we regulate the temperature of our spaces, and we shield ourselves from storms.  But increasingly wild and frequent weather events are making us doubt the endurance of our fortress of glass, steel,...

The post #142 Blue Carbon: The Forgotten Store first appeared on Engineering Matters.

By the end of 2021, 8 billion doses of COVID19 vaccine had been administered around the world. This achievement has only been possible thanks to world leading scientific research creating vaccines in record breaking time. However not many people realise that this is only part of the story. To get these vaccines into the arms...

The post #141 Setting up a Vaccine Factory first appeared on Engineering Matters.

High Speed 2 is the UK’s latest transport megaproject. Billed as the largest ever investment in the country’s rail, its first phase will link London in the south via 230km of high-speed rail with Birmingham in the West Midlands. With a focus on innovation and new technologies available, the project is determined to avoid the...

The post #140 HS2 and the Golden Thread of Station Design first appeared on Engineering Matters.

At 4.1GW Berwick Bank is planning to become the largest offshore windfarm in the world. This is enough generating capacity to power Scotland’s homes twice over and it would play a critical role in meeting the UK’s wind energy targets. But in order to move ahead it must overcome a range of challenges from obtaining...

The post #139 Offshore Wind: Scotland’s World Leader first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Ever since the beginning of the space age, scientists and engineers have considered the role extra-terrestrial resources could have to supporting missions of exploration and science. However, early missions to space and the moon were too brief to benefit from in-situ supplies. Now with a new drive to return to the Moon, this time to...

The post #138 Space Resources: The Next Leap first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Two years ago the world was preparing for COP25 in Madrid, and we released this episode (#36) about a calculator that was helping countries around the world to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and create more sustainable energy systems. Just as relevant now as it was then, and for the benefit of newer listeners, we...

The post #137 The Calculator that Could Still Save the World first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the 20 years before Covid-19 the proportion of 17- to 20-year-olds with a driving licence fell from nearly half to less than a third. Even before lockdowns and remote working, the way people moved was changing. As we organise for the future, we need to understand that the decisions on what to build and...

The post #136 The Future of Mobility first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Decarbonisation of transportation and shipping will require us to leverage improvements to green technologies and adapt to new ways of thinking and organising. It will require us to make different choices, on an individual and collective level. This is the final episode in our series of specials in the run up to COP26. We will...

The post #135 COP26: Decarbonising Transport first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The world is in a climate emergency and as its inhabitants, we have a narrow window of opportunity to take control. And the infrastructure industry has a fundamental and important role to play in reducing global emissions. In this episode, the third of our series leading up to COP26, we look at some ambitious targets...

The post #134 COP26: Working in a Climate Conscious World first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Early in the morning of 6 July 2013 a freight train carrying 7.7 million litres of crude oil derailed, destroying downtown Lac Megantic, a small town in Quebec, Canada. The disaster claimed 47 lives and destroyed over 30 buildings and condemning a further 36.  As part of the rebuilding efforts, the town saw an opportunity...

The post #133 COP26: The Legacy of the Lac Megantic Disaster first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Every year buildings around the world are responsible for 13.6bn tonnes of carbon equivalent to 40 percent of all emissions. These are generated by the materials that shape them, the energy that illuminates them and the molecules that heat them.  As countries gather in Scotland at COP 26 for the world’s biggest climate change conference,...

The post #132 COP26: Decarbonising Buildings first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Modern construction cranes are highly optimised. They’re designed to lift as much as possible, as far or as high as possible, while being able to fit into tight spaces when needed. To work safely and efficiently, they need to spread the weight of the load, and the crane, down to the ground they stand on,...

The post #131 Cranes: How to Plan a Lift first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The money flowing in to new construction technology is unprecedented. In the in the five years from 2009 to 2014, $8 billion was spent on digital investments to boost productivity, improve design and optimise project management. But in the following five years – 2014 to 2019 – this more than tripled, with investors pouring more...

The post #130 Navigating New Construction Technology first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Bradford in the North West of the UK was at the heart of the industrial revolution. Its world class textiles industry made it one of the richest cities in the world. But now it needs a new vision for the future and in this episode we have partnered with WSP to discover how the UK’s...

The post #129 A Vision for Clean Growth in Bradford first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As the regions of space around Earth become increasingly crowded with new satellites, the most popular orbits of all are becoming hazardous. Beyond a point, the crowding will reach a level at which a collision between two objects would result in a cascade. The initial collision would lead to yet more collisions until Low Earth...

The post #128 Positioning Satellites in New Space first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In today’s episode we are looking from the dawn of engineering to the modern day, at ‘tools for thinking’. These are the intellectual methods and the physical tools that engineers have used throughout history to work through their ideas and prove viability. Each advance makes it possible to work with numbers in new ways, and...

The post #127 Tools for Thinking first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Vienna, the capital city of Austria is also known worldwide as The City of Music and this musical metropolis is fine tuning the way that it constructs underground. In order to expand its metro system it has turned to the use of hydraulic props to hold back the pressure from the earth during construction of...

The post #126 Propping up Vienna first appeared on Engineering Matters.

New software using AI is enabling planners to identify options for engineering projects that are beyond the realms of human imagination. Traditionally, solutions are studied individually at great time and cost but budgets and timelines are more constrained than ever before. At the same time planners are being asked to incorporate more factors into identifying...

The post #125 Artificial Intelligence in Project Planning first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Intensive farming leads to nutrients seeping into the groundwater and into rivers. These enriched waterways deliver immense quantities of nutrients to coastal seas and cause algae to bloom, overwhelming the ecosystem. Fortunately, blue mussels can feed on these algae and also provide a sustainable food source both for humans and for the agriculture and aquaculture...

The post #124 Mussels: How to Save the Seas first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The world is on the brink of a climate related disaster. The solution requires a combination of engineering disciplines that do not come together very often. But they must, because the challenge is so enormous that the future of the human race quite literally depends on it.  Wheat, rice, sweetcorn, and soybean currently provide two...

The post #123 Engineering Plants: Intelligent Growth Solutions first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we look at how a new plant-based bitumen will be incorporated into asphalt mixtures currently being developed. The hope is that this will allow clients to build roads that act as carbon sinks. The reduction in carbon by using products like this could play a significant role in helping the UK achieve...

The post #122 Decarbonisation: Growing Roads on Trees first appeared on Engineering Matters.

After a decade of growth, there were 10 million electric cars on the world’s roads by the end of 2020. This growth trend is set to continue, with at least 145 million on the roads by 2030. The performance of batteries in this electrified future will be critical. In this episode we are looking at...

The post #121 Batteries: The Lithium-Silicon Age first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 2019, Justin Trudeau declared war on plastic waste. And single-use plastics were listed as a toxic material in Canada in May of this year. Before long, Canadian companies will have to find a use for the immense quantity of material they generate. Yet the North American reprocessing industry is still young. Meanwhile, on the...

The post #120 Recycled Plastic: The Canadian Potential first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As COVID-19 rampaged across the UK in 2020, society shut down and hospitals reached breaking point. For engineers building The Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran, South Wales their work took on a greater meaning. They had to make sure that this 450 bed critical care facility was completed ahead of time. Their actions didn’t just...

The post #119 The Grange: Saving Time, Saving Lives first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The last time a person walked on the moon was 14 December 1972. Almost 50 years ago. Since then, human operations have been confined to Earth orbit. But during that time, technology has not stood still. Now we are ready to take the next step. This episode we are talking to NASA about the Lunar...

The post #118 Gateway: The Lunar Space Station first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The first boats that harnessed the wind to skip over the waves may have been built 8,000 years ago. Several hundred years later, the earliest seaborne trading networks began to form in the Aegean and the Persian Gulf. Modern cargo shipping relies on ‘bunker fuel’ a thick, black sludge made from the dregs of the...

The post #117 How Sails Could Save Shipping first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Island states are at the forefront of climate change. Rising sea levels mean more coastal erosion, overtopping of defences and salinification of land. More frequent and devastating severe weather events are disrupting everyday life and acidification of the ocean is impacting on fishing. It is happening now, not in decades to come. From atolls in...

The post #116 Climate Change: Islands on the Frontline first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we explain how one of the world’s biggest problems – plastic waste can be reused in state of the art, energy-efficient road-building products. Working with Cumbria County Council within an initiative called Adept Live Labs Shell will be publicly sharing the knowledge they are gaining in these lab trials, with the overall...

The post #115 The Circular Road first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Ecologists on infrastructure projects have some new team members: Conservation dogs. Their superior olfactory systems mean that they can sniff out a plethora of protected species from great crested newts and water voles, to bats and birds. Critically these canine detectives can do this more quickly, accurately and safely than humans. Thanks to pioneering work...

The post #114 Engineering with Dogs first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted. The waste occurs all through the supply chain, from the farm itself, all the way to the household. It represents enough calories to potentially feed every undernourished person on the planet, and there is an environmental cost to this. About 6% of all human greenhouse gas...

The post #113 Food Waste: Making a Net Zero Jet Fuel first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Every good superhero universe has its origins story. Hagerbach’s begins with Rudolf Amberg, looking to innovate and find new efficiency savings for his iron mine. So began a 50-year journey from testing equipment and explosives, to fire and tunnel safety simulations, and ever more creative uses for underground space. Ultimately the mining industry in Switzerland...

The post #112 Hagerbach: The Bat Cave of Tunnelling first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When people think of digital tools to help with engineering problems, they usually think of a 3D model or a computerised image, representing something that exists in the real world. Machine learning is not that.  What it does is completely alien to your way of thinking. It operates in such a way that is totally...

The post #111 Machine Learning: Construction’s Future first appeared on Engineering Matters.

London is the world’s first national park city, with about 50% green coverage of its surface area. This is a legacy of the public and Royal parks, Victorian tree planting, and is something Londoners enjoy on a daily basis. Behind the scenes, major organisations and stakeholders are working to raise the profile of environmental sustainability. ...

The post #110 London: Boosting Biodiversity first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For millions of years spiders have been spinning naturally occurring proteins into an incredibly strong and durable silk. By studying the anatomy of these arachnids, scientists in the UK have cracked the code to reassembling natural proteins creating a new alternative to plastic. Pioneering research company Xampla says that its supramolecular engineered protein is fully...

The post #109 Spiders Versus Plastic first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Since the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, humanity has focused its activities in the southern continent on science and research. To do this effectively, logistics are critical. To prepare for the arrival of its new ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, the wharf at Rothera Research Station needed to be replaced. The...

The post #108 Antarctica: Building Rothera Wharf first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Preparation is currently underway for installation of one of the world’s longest fibre optic communications cables. Survey vessels are circumnavigating the entire coast of Africa determining the best locations for laying the cable on the seabed and bringing it onshore. At around 36,000km long it will provide connectivity to countries throughout the continent and form...

The post #107 Africa: Connecting a Continent first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Why do we build? Why develop society? And who reaps the benefit? In this episode we look at the new interest the construction industry is taking in quantifying and appreciating social value. That difficult-to-define idea that has also enjoyed the recent attention of central government, with legislation mandating that projects and tenders take it into...

The post #106 A Beginner’s Guide to Social Value first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In a field a few miles southwest of the city of Lexington in Kentucky, a sheep is quietly grazing in the shade. This is a very special sheep. It has been carefully selected from a rare breed to control the vegetation at Kentucky’s largest solar farm. The practice is known as Solar Grazing, an environmentally...

The post #105 Solar Grazing at Shaker Village first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In 2019/20 an estimated 693,000 workers in Great Britain sustained a non-fatal injury at work in Great Britain. The figure, which comes from the Office of National Statistics Labour Force Survey, represents 2,160 injuries per 100,000 workers.  The rate had been steadily decreasing for decades. This self-reported rate passed just below 4,000 per 100,000 in...

The post #104 Solving Rail’s Hidden Hazard first appeared on Engineering Matters.

What is Net Zero? And how can we get there? Can we mitigate the damage of three centuries of fossil fuel-powered industrialisation, with three decades of new energy infrastructure? While Canada is rich in renewables and already produces 80% of its electricity using non greenhouse gas sources, it, like countries around the world, has a...

The post #103 A Canadian Blueprint for Net Zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Every two years the Peak District hosts ‘Hillhead’ in a disused quarry. It is the largest event for the Quarrying, Construction and Recycling industries. It is known both for its lively equipment demonstrations and unpredictable weather. This year the coronavirus forced the event online, and the new format forced the organisers to reconsider the focus....

The post #102 Crushing Climate Change first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Along the west coast of Scotland lies a chain of island communities where fishing and farming have been a way of life for thousands of years.  In securing the future of these islands through providing reliable electricity, engineers and archaeologists are looking to the past to ensure that the rich history is not lost.  Replacing...

The post #101 Powering and Protecting Scottish Heritage first appeared on Engineering Matters.

This is the third and final episode of our three-part special looking at the delivery of megaprojects. In this episode we examine the lessons learned from two of the most iconic tunnelling projects of recent times: London’s Crossrail and New York’s East Side Access. Crossrail was the largest infrastructure project in Europe. Weaving in and...

The post #100 Megaprojects (Part 3): Learning from Experience first appeared on Engineering Matters.

For the 100th episode of Engineering Matters we bring you this three-part special looking at the delivery of a megaproject. In this second episode, we look at how a client can assess the scale of the task of delivering an impossibly complex scheme, such as a megaproject and supplement gaps in its skillset with industry...

The post #100 Megaprojects (Part 2): How to Deliver? first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Megaprojects are among the most complex and challenging of society’s undertakings. Each is grand is scope and due to the scale, none are ever built twice. Although they leverage the resources and political will of a nation, most encounter cost and schedule overruns, damaging reputations and souring public support. For the 100th episode of Engineering...

The post #100 Megaprojects (Part 1): What Makes a Megaproject? first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Today the world holds 33 megacities, cities that are home to over 10 million people. As these sprawling urban centres become more crowded than ever before infrastructure is under pressure to do more, last longer and respond faster. In this episode we find out why it is so important to understand exactly what is in the...

The post #99 Urbanisation: Infrastructure for Growing Cities first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As projects grow ever more complex, with tighter delivery demands placed on the entire supply chain, a baseline of digitalisation has been essential for the past few years… the companies that have adapted and thrived in this environment are now looking into areas they might not have worked with before. Predictive analysis, material tracking, sensors,...

The post #98 The Construction Playground first appeared on Engineering Matters.

To alleviate the burden on its largest city Jakarta, Indonesia is going to move its capital more than 1,000km from the densely populated island of Java, to less developed Borneo. The new city will be constructed near the port city of Balikpapan, an economic boon for the region but an increased strain on its already-tested...

The post #97 The Gateway to Indonesia first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Dalam episode ini kami bermitra dengan Shell untuk membahas pengaspalan ulang landasan pacu (atau runway) Bandara Balikpapan – Bandara Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman Sepinggan. Kita akan mempelajari bagaimana peningkatan jumlah penumpang dan armada pesawat yang lebih baru dan berat telah mendorong landasan pacu yang ada melampaui batasnya. Frekuensi serta beban yang meningkat, yang dikombinasiikan dengan...

The post #97 (Indonesian) Bandara Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman Sepinggan first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we are looking at a project being run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority which aims to build a prototype fusion power plant by the 2040s. To do that they are currently working on a concept design, choosing from a menu of international technologies. Their work needs to be complete by spring...

The post #96 Fusion: Britain Builds a Star first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The world’s oceans are in crisis. Plastic pollution, rising sea levels, warmer waters and chemical changes are degrading ocean systems and the world is at a dangerous tipping point. A point so dangerous that the United Nations has made 2021 the start of a new decade for ocean science for sustainable development. In this episode...

The post #95 Saving Oceans with Science first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Construction has not always recognised the value of using data from past projects to deliver better results in the present. It often finds itself starting from scratch on new projects, when learning from earlier experiences could help solve its productivity problem. But the so-called data rich design is still sporadic, and the industry suffers for...

The post #94 Barriers to Data Rich Design first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Something remarkable is happening in East Anglia. Waste heat from sewage treatment is being pumped into two enormous greenhouses creating low carbon heat for growing tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes, more than 10% of UK production. This use of waste heat is just one of the ways that water companies are using waste as a...

The post #93 Tomatoes and the Road to Net Zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we partnered with WSP to tell the story of Looe, a fishing port in Cornwall. The small town has the dubious accolade of ‘most flooded place in England’, and without intervention, the situation will get much worse.  With sea levels rising by as much as a metre over the next century, and...

The post #92 The Most Flooded Town In England first appeared on Engineering Matters.

With the weight of the built environment exceeding that of the total biomass for the first time, the human impact on the planet has passed a symbolic but significant milestone. What we do matters, and such a society needs to be run as effectively as possible. Every year the World Economic Forum publishes its Global...

The post #91 Global Risks and Shapeshifting Infrastructure first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The data quality in the planning and development sector is appalling. Whether supplied in this form accidentally, negligently, or recklessly does not matter – much of it is wrong. Yet over the years, this data has been used to form some of our most important decisions for the built environment. Now a new system will...

The post #90 The New Way to Plan a City first appeared on Engineering Matters.

A revolution is happening in the UK, and it is happening quietly. Inspired by the Copenhagen Bicycle Account, Bike Life is the biggest assessment of cycling in cities and urban areas across the UK and Ireland. Started in Birmingham, but now in 12 cities across the country, Bike Life has informed policy decisions, justified investment...

The post #89 Blue Lanes in the Black Country first appeared on Engineering Matters.

It is tree planting season in the UK. With their amazing carbon storage ability, flood alleviation capacity and biodiversity boosting potential, trees are fast becoming a critical part of plans to reduce net carbon emissions and mitigate against global warming. But with only 13 percent tree cover the UK lags behind Europe when it comes...

The post #88 Engineering Trees first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Welcome to the very last Engineering Matters of 2020!  In this episode we go back to some of the biggest stories that we covered over the past year and find out what happened next.  We also give listeners a peak behind the curtain at how we put the episodes together and introduce you to some...

The post #87 So That Was 2020 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

With a £100bn capital spending plan, the biggest ever investment in new transport infrastructure and a ten-point plan for climate change, the UK is determined to build its way to post COVID19 economic recovery. The bad news is that major projects have a terrible track record for not being built on time and going over...

The post #86 Enterprise Delivery: A Model for Recovery first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Contributing around 8% of global climate emissions, concrete is a major source of carbon. It is also essential, and no major project is feasible without thousands of tonnes of concrete. As the world looks to decrease its impact on the environment, with a reduction of carbon emissions forming a major focus within that effort, every...

The post #85 Concrete’s Role in the Climate War first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Have you ever walked past a newly surfaced road, perhaps around the corner from your house… and wondered when it will next be resurfaced? Side roads often seem to be in poor condition, and if you live in England, you probably will not see it resurfaced again in your lifetime. The average interval is 119...

The post #84 Asphalt of the Future first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we look at how the demands of the industry are becoming increasingly diverse, resulting in a similar change in the people carrying out the work.  We look at how the industry can adapt to use new tools at its disposal to take advantage of new skills, improve productivity, and make construction a...

The post #83 Digitisation and the road to diversity first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Set in the West Midlands county of Staffordshire is a former Royal Forest called Cannock Chase. It is part misty, secluded woodland and part undulating moorland. As you head up to the north of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the landscape becomes tame and you enter the Shugborough Estate, some 10km to the east...

The post #82 Securing the Shugborough Tunnel first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The adoption of healthy or unhealthy behaviours at project reviews can have an enormous impact on the overall project and even the wider industry.  Going down the wrong path can have a multiplier effect over the course of the project, and with growing project complexities, you need to be able to rely on your team....

The post #81 Zen and the Art of Programme Management first appeared on Engineering Matters.

It is by now a topic that sadly needs little introduction. It has impacted everyone in the last year. Changed lives and livelihoods, overturned entire sectors, and altered the global balance of power Our way of living and working has changed, and only in the last couple of weeks has hope appeared in the distance,...

The post #80 Covid 19: Construction Copes with the Pandemic first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we look at the Circuit Zandvoort, the iconic post-WW2 racetrack in the Netherlands. Beloved by fans of all flavours of motorsport, it recently had cause to redesign and resurface its track in the hopes of hosting the first Dutch Grand Prix since 1985. To do this required the design of some of...

The post #79 Rebuilding Zandvoort’s Rollercoaster Racetrack first appeared on Engineering Matters.

A revolution is approaching manufacturing, one that will see costs and time to market cut by as much as 50%. The digitalisation of engineering will reduce the need to churn out prototypes as a product goes back and forth between design and manufacturing departments. In a rapidly changing world, this revolution cannot come soon enough,...

The post #78 Reinventing invention first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Until a few years ago the offshore wind industry was constrained by the seabed characteristics of countries seeking to harness the generating capacity of the wind. Only those with shallow waters of around 40m or less could implement fixed offshore arrays. But in just a few years the game has changed. Floating offshore turbines are...

The post #77 Floating Turbines: Offshore Wind’s Game Changer first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode we have partnered with Autodesk Construction Solutions to look at a new approach to housing construction in Kenya.  We take a look at how a local architecture, engineering and construction firm, BuildX, is working with modern methods of construction – manufacturing modular units offsite – to produce housing on a scale, and...

The post #76 Building with Biomaterials first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The Vulcan is one of the most iconic aircraft ever flown by the Royal Air Force. Although not quite the household name that the Spitfire has been, it has always been a crowd favourite at air shows.  As well as the immense noise generated by its four Rolls Royce Olympus engines, which has thrilled children...

The post #75 Last Howl of the Vulcan first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Imagine a world where Alexa can tell you the latest, greenest, safest and most cost-effective way to design, deliver or operate something. Advice on decision-making that takes into account whole life costing, and tell you where best to spend money, to save more money in future. We all understand this concept in our own lives;...

The post #74 Weaving a New Data Fabric for Infrastructure first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Anglian Water currently enjoys a daily surplus of 150 million litres of water, but this is forecast to become a 150 million litre deficit by 2045. To help mitigate this shortfall it is constructing hundreds of kilometres of large diameter pipeline, as well as pumping stations and storage points to divert water from areas with...

The post #73 How to Build a Digital Twin first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On a bright morning in April, people in the city of Jalandhar in the state of Punjab stood out in the streets and saw something breath-taking… something that many of them had never seen before. The skies were so clear that for the first time in decades the soaring peaks of the Himalayas standing almost...

The post #72 Seeing the Himalayas: Kickstarting Net Zero first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Historically civilisations have sprung up wherever the land was most fertile, soils that supported good crop productivity to meet the food requirements of highly concentrated groups of people. Now with the global population close to 8 billion, and all arable land already committed to food production, we are turning to technology to help fertilise soils...

The post #71 Stewards of the Soil first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The railway network in the UK is old and vast and home to the first public railway to use steam locomotives in the world. The Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in 1825 and connected coal mines in the northeast of England. It was the metal track, the coal-fired furnace, and the shrill whistle of the...

The post #70 On Track for a Rail Revolution first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Maintaining a tunnel requires many hours of dedicated work by highly skilled engineers. And as our network of tunnels expands, so does the maintenance demand. Asset owners and local authorities have been under pressure for years to find a cost-effective way of monitoring and maintaining their underground infrastructure. And now, engineers in Switzerland have turned...

The post #69 Artificial Intelligence in Infrastructure first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Changes to the way we do design are coming; construction is languishing at the bottom of the productivity rankings, now below hunting and fishing.  Decision-making is happening late in the project lifecycle, meaning that design work has to be repeated unnecessarily, and a reward culture based on price rather than outcomes builds in more inefficiency....

The post #68 The Future of Design first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Remotely operated vehicles, uncrewed surface vessels and ever-increasing autonomy are removing personnel from dangerous work offshore in the North Sea and elsewhere.  Inspection of maritime assets is now being controlled from onshore operations centres. We look at one of these command and control centres, the Fugro facility in Aberdeen. With a robust regulatory framework and...

The post #67 The Future is Remote and Autonomous first appeared on Engineering Matters.

As a small island trading nation, Britain risks killing its economy and losing millions of jobs, unless it can allow people to get back to work in as normal a way as possible. So said John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport, who wants to see a more sophisticated way of opening our borders. He was...

The post #66 Fever Screening in Airports first appeared on Engineering Matters.

At the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, one of the few reasons people were allowed to leave their homes was to shop for the basic essentials.  Social distancing rules meant that shoppers were held in long queues that wound through supermarket car parks, moving slowly. One supermarket in northern England had the added problem of...

The post #65 Every Little Helps first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Manchester – the city has been on the cutting edge since the birth of the industrial revolution. From John Dalton’s Atomic Theory in 1803, to the invention of Graphene in 2004. More recently it has given the world the greatest music ever made. Home to 2.8 million people in 1.2 million dwellings over 500 square...

The post #64 EDAROTH first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When Dan Harmer received a call in March that told him to clear his schedule and prepare for a meeting, he knew it would be important, but had no idea quite what would be asked of him. With Covid-19 spreading exponentially, and the National Health Service looking increasingly vulnerable, he was the man chosen to...

The post #63 Nine Days to Build a Hospital first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Hundreds of millions of people in the most economically disadvantaged places in the world spend up to 20 hours per week washing clothes by hand. This task, traditionally forced onto women, is back breaking and monotonous. Then in 2018 a promise made in a rural village in southern India has led Nav Sawhney to leave...

The post #62 The Washing Machine Project first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On 28 October 1971 the UK conducted its first and only successful orbital launch, firing the Prospero satellite into low earth orbit – LEO on a Black Arrow rocket. Since that time, the country has lacked a native launch vehicle. In this episode we speak with Joe Laynton, a mechanical engineer working for Skyrora, an...

The post #61 Countdown to British launch first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Britain is emerging from some of the toughest social restrictions placed in peacetime history. As people come out of their homes, they are eager to meet friends and loved ones, and head back out into the world – but they are scared. To help keep people safe in a world gripped by Covid-19, and to...

The post #60 Covid 19: Creating safer spaces first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Engineers are in a uniquely powerful position. Able to shape our built environment and so influence the direction of civilisation, the impact that their expertise can have for the good of society and the environment is incredible. But people are human, and if a negative culture is allowed to thrive in the organisations that employ...

The post #59 Empowering Ethical Engineering first appeared on Engineering Matters.