Episodes

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 forest density, a fact the Committee on Climate Change and The Woodland Trust want to change. These and other organisations are calling on Government to plant ov...

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 members of the team that you don’t usually hear from. So sit back, enjoy, and we will see you in the new year. Guests Gemma Ball, Business Manager for Intelligent Transport Infrastructure, The Satellite Ap...

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 budget. In this episode we partner with consultant Mott MacDonald to find out how projects should be structured to make sure that taxpayers get better value from infrastructure in...

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 sector has to play its part. In this episode we look at concrete, and some innovations that just might tip the balance in our climate struggle. Guests Stuart Norman...

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 years. In this episode we have partnered with Shell to learn about a new trial project that could revolutionise the durability of the UK’s deteriorating roads, where maintenance budgets comprise...

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 better place to work…for everyone. This is a story not just about the industry as a whole, it is about careers, and as with a career, this story begins with education… Guests Avril Behan...

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 of the town of Stafford. Beneath the garden landscape, dotted by picnickers, joggers and dog-walkers, lies the 700m Shugborough Tunnel. Built in the mid-1800s, the construction w...

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. In this episode a group of experts in the field examines the good and the bad of project culture, as well as sharing some of the best ways to avoid a negative outcome. Guests Claire ...

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, as two vaccines appear potentially viable… offering protection in up to 95% of people who receive them. While this offers us hope that the coming years will be brighter, we are still ...

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 steepest banked corners in the world, the construction of which pushed the supply chain and the equipment to the limits. We will learn that although a racetrack may look like an ordina...

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, with major companies currently struggling to keep up with dynamic markets and customer demands. Now, there is a new initiative called Digital Engineering Technol...

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 entering commercial production and opening up vast swathes of ocean, where the seabed is deep and the wind resources are powerful to generate low carbon energy. No-on...

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 at a price, that will help ease the deficit and hopefully provide homes for tens of thousands of Kenyans. And we learn how a return to more traditional materia...

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 up and down the country, it was incredibly agile in the air for an aircraft that is 30m long, 8m high on the ground, and has a 30m wingspan. This is because its revolutionary delta wing design ...

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; spending more money on a boiler to get lower maintenance costs, for example. For infrastructure construction, this has, until now, been lacking, In this episode we are lo...

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 abundant supply to areas that are more at risk of shortages. This network will be planned, delivered, managed and maintained by the latest in advanced digital technology. ...

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 200km away to the north east were visible to the naked eye. But these were not the only people to see something incredible. As the world locked down to stop the spread of COVID-19, cities all ove...

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 and increase yields beyond what would have been possible in the past. But farmers are having to get cleverer all the time and ensure that every...

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 industrial steam engine that truly signalled the birth of the age of rail. But in the present day, asset owners such as Network Rail face an immense challenge to keep track of and maintain this...

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 to the complex structure of the human brain to find the solution. GUEST Alžběta Prokopová, Amberg Technologies View Alžběta’s prese...

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. In this episode we look at the problems facing construction, the technological enablers that have been developed to help, and a massive culture sh...

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 growing technological know-how, the offshore industry looks set to enjoy huge sustainability and safety benefits. Guests...

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 referring to the need to adapt to and live with Covid-19 for the foreseeable future. And part of the strategy being explored by airports, worksites and offices is elevated body temperature screening...

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 a car park resurfacing project that was underway, and anxious customers waiting next to fresh asphalt. This is the story of how they married recent technological develop...