Episodes

In this episode, we celebrate Showerkap, winner of the Innovation Champion category in the Engineering Matters Awards 2026. The final award of the series. Judged by representatives from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Engineers Without Borders UK, the award recognises innovation across all of this year’s categories. Showerkap won gold for technology designed to reduce the water and energy wasted in showers. Its system uses sensors to monitor showers at fixture level, helping buildin...

In this Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate the winner of the Net Zero Champion category, which recognises projects, processes, and tools that make a real contribution to reducing carbon emissions. The highest awards were to be given to those entries that demonstrate significant impact or widespread scope, or that overcome a specific challenge. Our gold-level award-winning entrant was Ceres Power for its solid oxide technology, which can generate electricity with high efficiency wh...

Returning to the Moon is the next step, but staying there is the next leap. Abrasive and electrostatically-charged dust particles cling to every surface, and find their way into every mechanism, while a radiation-blasted lunar surface swings from 130°C in the sun to a brisk -173°C in the shade. To survive and thrive in the lunar wasteland, we will need habitat modules, power plants, autonomous rovers, drilling equipment and more: a fleet of machinery that needs to survive these hostile conditio...

In this Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate the winner of the Sustainability Champion category, which recognises organisations driving groundbreaking innovation to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It promotes the conservation of natural resources, reduces waste and pollution, and supports social and economic stability. Our award-winning entrant is the Nuclear Manufacturing Group at the University of Sheffi...

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 joined up approach to planning and investment. When this episode was first recorded in September 2024, the focus was on how...

At the end of the Second World War, millions of tonnes of unwanted explosives and weapons were disposed of at sea. For decades, these dumped munitions lay hidden beneath the waves as time and tide passed over them. Now 80 years past that mass-dumping, corrosion has begun to expose the explosive chemicals inside these weapons casings. Lead, mercury and TNT breakdown products have begun to be detected in fish stocks throughout the affected waters. At the same time, the growth of offshore infrastr...

In this Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate the winners of the Health & Safety Champion category, which recognises engineers who are changing how we protect people in some of the world’s most challenging environments. Engineering is often measured by what we build: the bridges, tunnels, infrastructure, and systems that shape our world. But true engineering excellence is also defined by how we build, and how we protect the people who make it possible. This episode explores how innov...

This episode is part of the Engineering Matters Awards series, recognising individuals and organisations making an outstanding contribution to the engineering profession and wider society. Engineering is often judged by technical achievements: better products, more efficient processes, and breakthrough innovations. But some of the industry’s most meaningful contributions happen beyond the core aims of the work itself. The role of engineers in society is to solve problems and create a more livea...

For decades, infrastructure design has relied on ‘grey’ engineering: concrete flood walls, steel structures and rigid systems designed to control the environment. But with climate pressures intensifying, engineers are increasingly looking to work with nature rather than against it. This episode looks at the growing role of nature-based solutions in building climate-resilient infrastructure that can help manage flood risk, restore ecosystems, improve biodiversity and create more resilient commun...

In this special Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate excellence across the industry, highlighting our Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in the Diversity & Inclusion Champion category. Engineering suffers from a ‘leaky pipe’ problem, where a great many potential professionals count themselves out of a career long before university. It is a problem that has been clearly identified, but that the industry has long struggled to correct. Our featured guest and Gold Winner is Stuart Naismi...

Greg Wilkes has seen the highs and lows of running a small business in the UK construction sector. From being talked into staying with his apprenticeship by his father as a young carpenter, to success, failed partnerships, and success again, he began to make it a point to note down everything he did that worked, and everything that did not. Now with a seven-step program, that in keeping with the best traditions of the sector he has decided to streamline to five, Greg is training builders and ot...

In this episode, we tell the story of MERMAID from the Wildlife Conservation Society, this year’s Engineering Matters Awards Environment Gold Champion. Emily Darling, director for coral reef conservation at WCS, describes why scientists need better ways of sharing coral data, and how MERMAID helps them do so. Rita Bento, a researcher at NYU Abu Dhabi joins the episode, in an interview recorded in January 2026, to describe the work the university has been doing with regional partners to map cora...

Around the world, engineers are working to protect the environment. In this episode, we introduce eight companies who are taking steps to safeguard the natural world. All have been shortlisted for the Engineering Matters Awards. The first three shortlisted entries look at ways of understanding the natural world. Petra Ringeltaube explains how RWE’s SeaMi is taking a less invasive, ecosystems-based approach to monitoring biodiversity on wind farms. Emily Darling of the Wildlife Conservation Soci...

In its seventh Allocation Round the UK executed the largest offshore wind auction in European history, putting pen to paper on 8.4GW of new capacity, enough to power 10 million homes. Allocation Round 8 is expected to be even more ambitious, as the UK looks to upgrade its radar systems to enable a 10GW installation, according to Windtech International. Offshore wind projects require complete understanding of conditions on, and below, the seabed. As projects proliferate and demand for surveys an...

The London skyline is undergoing perhaps its most significant transformation in decades as a new ‘vertical renaissance’ is sending tremors of excitement from Guildhall to Mansion House. The City of London Corporation says that over half a million square metres of office space was granted planning permission in the City in 2025, equivalent to more than ten ‘Gherkins’ with around half of this amount already under construction. This includes the leviathan 309.6m ‘1 Undershaft’ which will be as tal...

Humanity’s furthest ever journey into space has been delayed. Again. An interruption to the flow of helium forced NASA to scrap the revised 6 March launch date of the Artemis II mission, and begin the slow process to roll the increasingly unfortunate rocket back to the vehicle assembly bay. While the delays are frustrating for the engineers involved, and space enthusiasts alike, every precaution has to be taken when a human crew is involved. While we wait for this historic mission, we thought ...

Systems thinking allows engineers to understand complex systems and the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of their interventions. It avoids the accidental creation of new problems when solving a first, and allows for the identification of effective leverage points for more impactful, sustainable change. The world, the built environment and our infrastructure all have patterns that can be understood with a few changes in thought process. In this episode we’re looking at the work Engineers W...

Around the world, urban planners are seeking to deliver urban growth and increase access to city centres through the development of transit-oriented communities. These combine new publicly-backed transport infrastructure, with privately-financed residential and commercial development. It’s a route to more sustainable cities, but it involves careful navigation of budgetary constraints and the needs of existing communities. Michael Matthys explains some of the challenges of delivering transit-ori...

In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia, buoyed by a surge in oil prices, embarked on an ambitious building programme. The country moved rapidly to develop its cities and infrastructure. However, Prince Salman, then the governor of Riyadh, now the country’s King, saw that this was resulting in cities that were unmoored from their local context. This episode traces the evolution of modern architecture in Saudi Arabia, from the economic boom of the 1970s and the development of a distinctive Salmani-style. We ...

For facade specialists, stone is highly prized for its performance and character. The right choice of stone can anchor a building in its local context, or make a striking statement. While stone has fallen out of use, modern approaches mean that it could now be used in the same standardised ways as steel, concrete and glass. In this episode we learn that it is ripe for a return as a structural material, decades after it was supplanted by concrete and steel. A series of projects demonstrate how ...

Sustainability experts often use a hierarchy to help their thinking about interventions. The best way to limit your impact is to do nothing at all. If that’s not possible, then use as few materials as you can. And finally, if extensive work must be conducted, then replace more carbon-intensive materials with those with less impacts. In this episode, Lucas Grisoni describes three projects in Paris that demonstrate different approaches to sustainable construction. For the University of Chicago’s ...

Lifecycle carbon assessment – the process of monitoring the total carbon footprint of a structure from the first spade in the ground to demolition – sits at the confluence of engineering and sustainability. As we adapt our processes and understanding of the built environment, LCA is a critical measure to guide our decision making. The nature of the work is truly holistic, in winter an icy road might have salt spread on it. This in turn could corrode rebar, which needs to be replaced. That work ...

Retrofitting is an instrumental step in reducing the carbon footprint of a city’s building stock. It also extends the life of a building and has a lower environmental impact than demolishing inefficient properties and building anew. Even a new development, such as the East Village in Stratford London, although just 12 years old, is still largely heated by fossil fuel. Adaptable designs are critical to bring future improvements to existing structures. Marion Baeli is a pioneer of sustainable ar...

When you are designing a stadium for the World Cup, or any major sport, it’s vital to have a fan’s-eye view. For more than a century, the architects tasked with designing stadiums have used the C-value, developed by Victorian theatre designer John Russel. But this value just measures the view in one direction, towards the stage. Sporting events are viewed in the round, with fans all around the stadium bowl. In this episode, we hear from Mark Fenwick, whose practice has designed stadiums for the...