Episodes

Becoming a Role Model: Ying Wan Loh From rotary drilling on Mars to hybrid-electric aviation and the expansive global supply chains of the aeronautical industry, we explore the engineering life of Ying Wan Loh. In 2019 Ying became the Institution of Engineering and Technology Young Woman Engineer of the Year, a title given to astronaut in the making Sophie Harker in 2018. Growing up as one of four siblings in Penang in Malaysia, Ying grew frustrated with the Hollywood version of female leaders ...

Heathrow has announced an ambitious expansion plan that will add a third runway and take the airport to cope with growing demand up until 2050. It calls for massive development of its infrastructure to cope with growing passenger numbers and it takes an innovative approach to its supply chain, looking to distribute the economic benefits of its expansion across the UK. In this episode, we are joined again by leading construction industry journalist Antony Oliver interviewing Jon Kerbey, Digital ...

What do the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Ipswich Barrier and Heathrow Airport have in common? None of them could have been realised without a complex network of supporting infrastructure built before the main structures themselves were erected. Known as the temporary works this vital and often complex system of scaffolding, excavation support, propping elements and façade retention is often overlooked. But without it, buildings and infrastructure could not be constructed. In this episode we delv...

Historically, the nation’s productivity has improved with economic growth, but since the global financial crisis and despite the UK’s recovery, productivity has flatlined. The Office for National Statistics calls this “The productivity puzzle” and for construction the situation is even worse. Productivity has floundered since the 1990s. But as big data continues to drive the fourth industrial revolution, construction is now taking much needed steps forward. Solving the productivity puzzle then ...

How a calculator is helping countries around the world to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and create more sustainable energy systems. When Professor David MacKay of Cambridge University wrote a book about sustainable energy in 2009, he could not have realised that this groundbreaking text would go on to form the basis for a calculator that could save the world from climate catastrophe. By investigating the true impact of energy demand and supply on carbon emissions he provided much needed ...

As Quantum computing becomes a 21st century reality, Professor Sir Peter Knight explains why controlling the register of quantum bits that make up a quantum processor is so difficult, and explains how the journey to quantum computing is creating new technologies that no one could ever have predicted……. Peter’s life in quantum physics began in the 1970s at the University of Sussex and in this episode he takes Engineering Matters on a journey through quantum discoveries; from understanding quantu...

Noorullah Kuchai 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 been displaced by war like he was. And the challenge is enormous. More people are being displaced by conflict and disaster than ever before. Today 71 million people around the world are in need of shelter, either as refugees having crossed borders to get to safety, or by becoming homeless inside their ...

World leading smart robotics, industry disrupting technologies and the next generation of augmented reality are just some of the advances in action at Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre’s Factory 2050. Launched in December 2015, Factory 2050 was set up as a reconfigurable glass walled factory of the future, and since then it has helped businesses across the country benefit from the next industrial revolution – industry 4.0. These include a small renewable cooling business Solar-Po...

Had its use as a gigantic 300m high radio antenna not been recognised in the early 1900s the magnificent Eiffel Tower, would have been pulled down and destroyed. Under its original contract as the wrought iron gateway to the 1889 Paris World Fair, it was only to stand for 20 years. But its creator, engineer Gustave Eiffel, had other ideas. In the same way that Eiffel initially convinced politicians to support this dazzling demonstration of France’s industrial power, he persuaded them to keep it ...

Back in December 2017 the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission set the UK a huge challenge: to create a digital model of our national infrastructure. Known as a National Digital Twin this engineering feat requires secure sharing of high-quality standardised data between infrastructure owners and operators, making operations more efficient and resilient. A new task force was set up to lead this massive digitisation programme and in this episode its chair Mark Enzer sets out the plan for creati...

Chloe is 16 and interested in an engineering career. She is also the daughter of Philip Hoare, President of engineering consultant Atkins. To find out more she digs deep into her Dad’s engineering life story by interviewing him about the projects that have shaped his career. From harrowing tragedy on a bridge project to world firsts in underground construction and his love of railways, she explores how her Dad came to lead a business of 18,000 people and grills him on crucial issues facing engin...

Growing up in a tiny village in rural Scotland, regular power cuts would leave Lorna Bennet and her family without electricity for days on end. Determined to become self-sufficient Lorna set about learning how to create sustainable energy, from designing water wheels to working on tidal power arrays and testing the world’s largest offshore wind turbine blades. Becoming a mechanical engineer has enabled Lorna to push the boundaries of renewable energy technology but working on world firsts is not...

Habitat for the UK’s Great Yellow Bumblebee has declined 80 percent over the last century thanks to the loss of the flower rich meadows that sustain them. They now only persist in the North of Scotland, so when Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks planned a new substation in the Highlands, preserving the habitat of the bumblebee was a crucial part of the design process. For SSE this was part of a wider strategy to ensure that every project they build has a net improvement on biodiversity. ...

After 844 trial tests, and setting his own street on fire, founder of Scottish start-up MacRebur Toby McCartney finally hit on a viable solution for repairing potholes. His idea sought to resurface roads using recycled plastics, and the result is a form of polymer modification of asphalt that uses a mixture of waste plastics and additives to create an alternative to bitumen. Bitumen is the sticky, fossil fuel derived substance that binds together the aggregates that surface our roads, and althou...

Placing the United Nations’ sustainable development goals at the heart of projects can regenerate UK communities. From a new 4km road link that saved a former mining community in Yorkshire, to a coastal replenishment scheme that brought new opportunity to Colwyn Bay in North Wales, we hear how incorporating the sustainable development goals is changing lives for the better. Embracing the SDGs means doing things differently. It means looking at local needs in a new way and asking what more can p...

Underneath cities all over the UK subterranean mountains of calcified fat are gathering in our sewers as fat, oil and grease stick to baby wipes and harden to form a blubbery bacterial blockage. Removing them is dangerous, manual work, putting people and the infrastructure itself at risk. In this episode we venture to the site of Europe’s biggest fatberg in Blackfriars, London with Lanes Group special projects manager Andy Howard, who explains that removing a fatberg is not necessarily the end o...

Could the lightest element in the periodic table be the answer to the world’s most weighty challenge of decarbonising energy? Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe and the most energy dense. Burning it creates clean electricity and heat without generating carbon emissions, but to utilise it, first it must be released from the organic materials or water that host it. So how do we capture its potential to create clean energy systems of the future in a cost-effective way? In this e...

It was a meeting with the first Briton in space, Dr Helen Sharman, that changed the course of Sophie Harker’s life forever. A maths student at The University of Nottingham, she took this advice seriously and went on to become an aerodynamics and performance engineer at BAE Systems. Although she is yet to leave planet earth, Sophie has been working on designs for a revolutionary new aircraft designed to take off from a runway and enter space in a single stage. Project such as this are just part o...

Since 1913 the world’s most famous flower show has been held every Spring in Chelsea in London. This year among the electric blue Persian Slippers, the white and yellow Anthemis Punctata, and the eye catching, deep pink Digitalis Illumination series of Chris Beardshaw’s Morgan Stanley Garden, there is a focus on creating beautiful gardens with a lighter environmental footprint. To achieve this they rejected diesel fuelled excavators and turned to a battery powered machine, Volvo Construction Equ...

Norwegian airline Widerøe needs a new fleet of planes to serve its regional passenger base. But it doesn’t want to buy conventional aircraft. It wants a zero emission fleet to undertake its 450 flights per day, and move 2.8 million passengers per year. But so far, no electric planes have been certified for commercial flight and Widerøe is calling on the industry to step up its efforts and deliver aircraft with electric propulsion systems. In fact Norway has set a target to electrify all of its a...

How did Norway become the world’s most successful electric vehicle market? Last month almost 80 percent of all new cars sold in Oslo were EVs and across the entire country it was 58 percent. Even more remarkable is that the soaring popularity of EVs is despite the lower operating efficiency that batteries achieve in cold climates. This in turn exacerbates the biggest challenge facing the manufacturers and policy makers who are seeking to convince vehicle owners to shift away from thermal power: ...

From additive manufacturing in space, to 3D printing customised pharmaceuticals and non-planar electronics, the next revolution in 3D printing is already underway. In this episode we head to the International Space Station and interview the engineer behind a world first in 3D printing, “The Refabricator”. This 3D printer that can not only print plastic in space, but can recycle it too offering massive potential for future treatment of plastics on earth. We also consider how additive manufacturin...

Four thousand years after it was first used as a form of nutrition for the Olmec people of Mesoamerica, engineers are finding new ways to harness the potential of the fruit from the miraculous Theobroma Cacao tree, better known today as cocoa pods. Their solution could provide rural farming communities in Ghana with a new form of renewable energy, that simultaneously makes use of the one part of the cacao fruit that is left to rot, the husk. By examining the thermal properties of the four main ...

As young people all over the world protest over political inaction on climate change, we ask how engineers can prevent our planet’s temperature rising past the point of no return. Responding to this challenge means that engineering professionals, businesses and institutions must do things differently. They must say no say no to carbon intensive development, leave fossil fuels in the ground and focus on developing the solutions that will enable the world to transition into a low carbon future. W...