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 of the global population meant that manufacturing faced a challenge it ha...

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 mistakes of the past. Immersive virtual reality, emotion sensing, and eye...

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 planning consent to understanding the incredibly complex and variable ground conditi...

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 stay, and as we prepare to push on to Mars, space resources will...

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 are re-running the episode this week. When Professor David MacKay of Cambridge...

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 what to invest in will have a direct impact on people’s behaviour. Investing in infrastructur...

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 learn about a new concept known as a Transport-Energy Nexus, we will le...

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 companies can adopt if they want to function responsibly in a climate-conscious w...

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 to build back better and decided to embrace the green economy. A large...

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, we are releasing a series of episodes detailing some of...

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, evenly and predictably. A lift planner calculates how best to do this with the equipment avail...

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 than $25 billion into construction tech. We often hear that constructi...

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 youngest city by demographic spread, is embarking upon a new strategy for clean green growth. A strategy that could c...

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 Orbit is a cloud of hypersonic bullets of shrapnel. That is the doomsda...

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 theories produced makes for more efficient mental labour, allowing fo...

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 a critical new station. These innovative supports create less waste than other temporary mea...

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 best solutions from emissions prof...

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 industries.  Carefully locat...

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 thirds of human caloric intake worldwide. But the world is changin...

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 net zero. The engineers think it might be possible store up to a million tonnes of...

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 a start-up that is hoping to revolutionise the materials we use to build batteries, just in time for th...

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 other side of the Atlantic, a mature reprocessing industry in the UK wa...

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 save lives. They saved money because without it Wales might have n...

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 Gateway, a small space station that will orbit the moon and act as a hub, supporting operations on the su...

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 refining process. It is also loaded with sulphur, which produces gases and particles ha...