Episodes

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 miles, Greater Manchester is the heart of the Northern Powerhouse and has a bigger economy than the whole of Wales… but this economy does not work for everyone. As well as a bigger econo...

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 build an emergency Nightingale hospital in Birmingham. The catch? He had less than two weeks before the first patients were expected to arrive. This is the story of how the constructio...

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 his dream job at a world-beating engineering company and launch an ethical start-up. The Washing Machine Project was born. Nav’s plan is to mass produce a crank-operated washing mach...

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 Edinburgh-based company that aims to correct just that, and return launch capability to the UK by 2023. Joe tells us about a journey that had led him from playing with Lego and wat...

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 adapt to the new behaviours of the population, episode partner Atkins (part of the SNC-Lavalin Group) has been advising local authorities on how best to modify their public spaces, and to cope with the ...

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 them, or if no attention is paid to understanding how problems are approached, history has taught us that fatal disaster can be the result. It is vital that every mem...

Since mid-2019, over 900 architectural practices in the UK have made a declaration of climate and biodiversity emergency, acknowledging the extreme seriousness of our situation and making a public commitment to positive change. Now joined by declarations from other disciplines in the construction industry, the growing movement needs coordination or it risks becoming siloed. In this episode we interview the man coordinating these engineering declarations: IStructE Gold Medal winner Mike Cook, a...

The coronavirus pandemic that has torn through society has also seen supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) depleted at an alarming rate. As doctors and nurses are forced to improvise, and traditional suppliers struggle to meet the sudden increase in demand, help has arrived from an unexpected group of enthusiasts. The 3D printing community has come to the rescue. Thousands of volunteers are sacrificing their sleep to produce emergency PPE, and to buy time for supply chains to adjust t...

Biodiversity in the UK is facing an emergency with around 30 percent of native species becoming extinct since the 1970s. This loss of wildlife, which echoes trends all over the world, could have catastrophic impacts on food, air quality and the environment. However for the UK change is on the horizon with a new Environment Bill seeking to reverse this with requirements for developers to deliver an increase in biodiversity on their projects – a concept known as biodiversity net gain. This update...

How data from satellites can track structural movement, and give early warning of potential failure. New research shows that catastrophic bridge collapses could have been prevented if engineers had been paying attention to the right information, information that is currently being collected by satellites orbiting our planet. Satellite monitoring is one of the many innovations to come from the burgeoning space sector, and we explore a new tool developed between the UK’s Satellite Applications Cat...

Carving out underground space for railways, roads, waterways, urban development and even fishing and farming is how some people spend their entire careers. One of those people is chair of the International Tunnelling Association Young Members Committee Keith Bannerman, who was obsessed by the industry from the moment he attended a short course in Brisbane and met “real rock star tunnellers”. These people shared their love of a vibrant industry full of opportunity, risk, and challenge. He was ca...

As cases of COVID 19 explode, the World Health Organisation is urging countries around the world to learn from South Korea. Before even recording its first case of the virus its technology industries mobilised, enabling it to test anyone with symptoms, perform extensive contact tracing and isolate those at risk – fast. This enabled the country to protect its 51 million inhabitants as early as possible. In the UK, two months after its first reported case of the virus, government is now working o...

How a new 2.5km cable pulled railway will connect Luton Airport’s terminal to the UK rail network boosting future growth. Today rail passengers arriving at the airport must disembark from the train and finish their journey on a shuttle bus. But not for much longer. Deep sheet piles are currently being driven into the ground to set out a cut and cover tunnel that will deliver a new rail link under the airport’s existing infrastructure. These piles will cut through clay and chalk and need to resis...

The rapid and exponential spread of the new coronavirus, COVID 19 is changing the way that we live and work. First detected in December 2019 in Wuhan City, China, within three months it was a global pandemic. To keep operating through the crisis businesses turned to digital technologies to support home working. But this connectivity relied on infrastructure, from internet services to power supplies. In this episode we asked a range of sector experts from the UK’s largest infrastructure consultan...

The UK has a legacy of 600,000 tonnes of nuclear waste being held in temporary storage facilities at 30 sites around the country. It is enough to fill a football stadium and despite over 60 years of generating nuclear power in the UK, we still don’t have a long-term plan for disposing of it. Scientific consensus is that deep geological burial of waste that has been contained in layer after layer of impermeable materials is the only realistic solution, but the truth is that no community in the UK...

This winter a series of weather bombs detonated across the UK, overwhelming river systems and overtopping flood defences. River levels were off the charts, 4000 properties flooded, some temporary defences failed and people took to the streets in canoes. The UK is entering unchartered territory as far as flooding is concerned. Yet the threat of drought is not far away as climate change tells us that warmer temperatures and drier summers are here to stay. Facing the reality of global heating and ...

How nematode worms, 3D printing and drones could revolutionise our approach to maintaining road surfaces. According to the RAC we are 1.5 times more likely to hit a pothole today than we were over a decade ago and winter is peak pothole time. In the cold months the UK’s road surfaces weather the impact of freezing conditions and the subsequent ground movement from thawing ice that goes on to create cracks and damage. With the average road being resurfaced only once every 67 years, preventing po...

An update on our Drones episode from January 2019 where we learn about new uses for unmanned aerial vehicles, and celebrate being shortlisted for three awards in the Publisher Podcast Awards held in London in March 2020. No-one knows how many penguins are in the Antarctic, and last year we discovered that thanks to the use of drones this is set to change, as scientists are using these unmanned aerial vehicles to fly over colonies of Chinstrap, Adelie and Gentoos. One year on it is not just peng...

A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years in 1930, the third billion in 30 years in 1960, the fourth billion in 15 years in 1974, and the fifth billion in only 13 years 1987. Growth rate hovers at a little over one per cent each year. Meaning every year there are around 80 million additional people needing a place to live, fo...

How new technology is supporting the UK’s offshore wind industry to bring down costs and accelerate construction. From new methods for drilling into the seabed, to advanced foundation design models and improved data capture, innovation is critical for this fast-growing market. But it won’t be easy. Deeper waters and variable ground conditions make these some of the most difficult construction projects in the world. At the same time offshore wind growth targets are enormous, and the waters where...

Over the past two decades the UK has become the world’s leading offshore wind energy producer. Not only is it responsible for 40% of all offshore wind generated electricity, it is set to quadruple the installed capacity by 2030. Its journey to becoming a world leader began in 2000 with construction of just two Vestas V66 turbines, at a site off the coast of Blyth in Northumbria. In the first of a two part episode we go back to those turbines and to a time where a crane driver called Bobby Hazel...

From new immersive technologies to life saving applications, virtual reality is finally meeting up to expectations of the 1990s and transforming the way that projects are designed. Its ability to improve visualisation of new and existing infrastructure is bringing many benefits, including some that users hadn’t anticipated as well as saving millions of pounds in prevention of expensive construction re-work. As VR takes off we talk to the pioneers who are proving that immersion in digital infras...

This week we are bringing you an episode of our newly launched Tunnelling Podcast, made in partnership with the British Tunnelling Society. In March 1999, the Mont Blanc tunnel fire claimed the lives of 38 tunnel users and one fire fighter. For decades debate has raged over the best approach to tackling a fire, saving life and the asset. Tunnel fires are a regular and unavoidable feature of road tunnel operation. Now, two decades since the Mont Blanc fire the rules for road tunnel design are g...

Last year the UK set a legally binding target to become carbon neutral by 2050, ahead of any other major global economy. In doing so it took the first ambitious steps on a massively difficult path, and the road to net zero requires a total overhaul of how infrastructure is designed, delivered and managed. In this episode we explore the journey that organisations are taking to reduce their emissions from switching to renewable energy, planting millions of trees, cutting down their operational car...