Episodes

Nuclear power promises to provide energy when other sources can’t. But nuclear plants currently take a long time to build—often more than a decade. Anthony Burch, digital manager, Egis, and his colleagues, are working on the key components of Hinkley Point C in England. These form the so-called ‘nuclear island’—the reactor building and four associated safety buildings. In this episode, Anthony describes the challenges of delivering ‘right first time’ construction on a highly complex, one off, a...

At ITER, in France, scientists and engineers from around the world are working together to develop nuclear fusion at power plant scale. The project could one day lead to a world of truly abundant green energy. In this episode, Caroline Dixon explains some of the logistical challenges of working on a project that is perhaps humanity’s largest ever experiment. In this decades-long project, the engineers building the reactor are in a constant race to keep up with scientists working on the cutting ...

There is a changing view of the environment among public sector clients in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has ambitious goals like generating 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030, the UAE has targets such as diverting 80 percent of its waste from landfill by by 2031, and Qatar is moving towards 100% treated wastewater reuse. With environmental considerations now at the core of new projects, rather than being a problem to be dealt with, each project must consider its impact on the environme...

Lismore sits at the confluence of two rivers in New South Wales. Covering more than 1,300 square kilometres, it is home to more than 44,000 people. In 2022, it was hit by a huge flood, the highest on record, followed by a smaller, though still devastating, second flood. Five lives were lost in the disasters, along with 500 properties, making 2,000 people homeless at a cost of AUD 350M in damages. The event raised critical questions about flood prevention and planning. It underscored the urgent ...

Society needs to consider the impact of climate change on our cities because it is no longer a future challenge; it is a present reality. Cities with their concentrated populations, infrastructure and supply challenges are uniquely vulnerable to climate-related shocks, exposed to risks such as floods, heatwaves, water scarcity and any disruption to their systems. Engineers and decision-makers must embed sustainability and resilience into every stage of the planning and design process to ensure ...

Residents of tall buildings can face significant risks in the event of fire or structural failure. At Grenfell Tower in the UK, a fire in a resident’s kitchen spread rapidly around the building, due to failures in the testing and installation of cladding materials, and leading to widespread loss of life. The inquiry into the fire revealed how overlooked risks can line up, causing disaster. The 2022 Building Safety Act established that dutyholders—owners and developers—of buildings like this sho...

A wise asset owner builds on solid ground. Unless ground risks are clearly identified, projects can easily be delayed or delivered over budget. Some risks may not even be fully understood until an asset begins operations. In this final episode of three on ground risks and the asset life cycle, Karim Khalaf explains how one major European vehicle manufacturer only learned how the soil beneath their new manufacturing plant would act, once steel presses started working—effectively inducing a series...

Without a clear understanding of ground conditions, unquantified risk can be transferred from project owner to lead contractors when a contract is signed. In the first episode of this three part series, we explored how geophysical screening, using non-intrusive methods, can be used to reduce uncertainty in site selection and provide clarity on construction costs and delivery schedules. In this episode, we move past the final investment decision, to the development of project designs. Karim Khal...

On any project, uncertainty creates risk. Decisions that are made without a good understanding of site conditions can result in overengineering or threats to safety. Delivery may be delayed, and unexpected costs incurred. To avoid these risks, project owners and other stakeholders should question their assumptions and get real, actionable insights throughout the project lifecycle. In this three-part series, we explore a key source of risk to any project, subsurface conditions, and a new approac...

Wastewater treatment is an overlooked lifesaver. While the medical advances of the last 100 years—penicillin, chemotherapy, and, more recently, mRNA vaccines—have transformed healthcare, keeping our water supplies free from pathogens like cholera and dysentery, has saved many more lives. The systems developed to treat wastewater are so successful that we can afford to flush and forget. But this is infrastructure we must not overlook. Growing populations, increased use by industry, and regulatio...

Green-grey engineering combines nature-based solutions with traditional civil engineering. It can be used in flood protection, with mangroves acting as a first line of defense rather than relying wholly on seawalls or earthen berms. As parts of the world face dual threats of flood and drought, the same systems can incorporate drainage and water collection. Unlike traditional civil engineering, nature-based solutions offer a wide range of additional benefits. Mangroves act as fish nurseries feed...

The infrastructure sector is adopting AI with enthusiasm. A new whitepaper from Bentley Systems, Pinsent Masons, Turner & Townsend, and Mott MacDonald, The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Built Environment, surveyed the sector, and found the 48% of the infrastructure companies they spoke to were trialling AI, or had already implemented it. But only one fifth had a comprehensive AI policy, more than a third had no organisational policy, and 37% had only limited project controls, or none ...

This week, the UK House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, or EAC, released a report on environmental sustainability and housing growth. The UK government is striving to meet a target of building one and a half million new homes, and has raised concerns about the risk that environmental objections could delay their construction. But, the EAC says, the UK must balance these needs. One tool to do this is the Whole Life Carbon Assessment guidelines, produced by the RICS, the Royal Instituti...

From blood pressure monitors and smart watches, to MRIs and step counters, many of us make tracking health metrics part of our daily routine. Armed with data, we can take steps to extend our lives. And this approach can also be used to extend the life of key components of our energy infrastructure. The offshore wind industry is entering a period of transformation. The first stages of development are over—now wind farm owners must focus on efficiently extending the lives of their assets. In othe...

Around the world, climate change and shifting alliances are opening up new theatres of geopolitical competition. In the Arctic, Canada must be ready to patrol a new coastline; in the Pacific, Australia faces increased tension with China. Naval defence will be a key component of these nations’ security planning. But the so-called ‘exquisite’ capabilities of modern navies—such as submarines and frigates—are often beyond the technological and supply chain capacities of any single nation. They requ...

Dr Meganne Christian is a scientist and adventurer. In her research, she has studied the performance of novel materials including the use of nanoscale metals for hydrogen storage, and the use of graphene across a diverse range of applications. But her career has taken her far from the traditional university lab. In 2018-2019, Meganne was a member of the over-winter research team at Concordia Base in Antarctica. Here, she managed experiments in one of Earth’s most extreme environments. The view ...

The tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in west London demanded new ways of thinking about professionalism and ethics in the engineering sector. However, since that awful night in 2017, which saw the loss of 72 lives, fatal incidents and near misses have continued to happen: in Genoa, in Toddbrook, in Miami, and on many more buildings and structures around the world, we have seen regular reminders of the way risks can accumulate dangerously on engineered projects. The ICE first reviewed safety in the...

In Europe, and around the world, renewable electricity generation is being built at pace. However, these sources of energy create a new challenge: they are intermittent, and will not generate power on dark, windless days. One solution to the challenge is to install grid scale storage. If you’re building an offshore wind farm, with a view to serving distant industrial centres, megawatt- and gigawatt-scale storage may be the answer. But much of our energy use happens in the home, or in smaller b...

Last week, at the end of September 2025, a study by Regen, commissioned by the MCS Foundation, found that biomethane had a limited capacity to replace natural gas in the UK’s domestic heating. The study emphasised the importance of focusing on electricity and heat pumps to keep our homes warm. This means that much of the UK’s gas pipeline networks may not be viable in the coming decades. However, the backbone of the network and some local distribution infrastructure does have a future. In this...

It’s a simple fact of chemistry that cement cannot be produced, without also producing carbon dioxide. But this does not mean that the sector—and its clients in the construction industry—cannot decarbonise. The equally simple solution is just to capture and store the carbon dioxide, before it can enter the atmosphere. The challenge is how to deliver those carbon capture systems. To fully decarbonise the sector, new chemical processing facilities will need to be installed at every cement plant i...

When launching a satellite into orbit, getting the positioning right is of paramount importance. As humanity sends more satellites into space, the vast space above our heads has become hazardously busy. State-of-the-art positioning technology has helped to counter this problem, with existing systems able to track the location of satellites to an accuracy of metres. Now, a new approach, Fugro’s SpaceStar technology, works with GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) to enhance that accuracy t...

When flooding happens, damage and disruption ripples out across assets and infrastructure. Private businesses and homeowners can insure themselves against direct damages to buildings. But the impacts on the local economy go much further: debris can block transport networks, causing businesses to fail and reducing tax revenues, at a time when increased local government spending is needed to finance recovery. New approaches to public sector insurance can provide cash for debris removal and infras...

Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented the punch card as a means of inputting control data to one of the earliest automated technologies, the weavers’ loom. A generation later, Charles Babbage used this innovation as part of his design for an ‘analytical engine’, and Ada Lovelace demonstrated how sets of instructions could be written for the engine to enable any computing task. Almost two centuries on from Babbage and Lovelace’s invention of computing hardware and software, IT (information technology) ...

The metaverse is often thought of as an alternative virtual space, a world separate from reality where we can hang out with avatars of our friends and families, or shop at virtual stores. But the industrial metaverse ties the physical and the virtual much more closely together, with a focus that is less on photorealism, and more on using connected data to solve real world problems. Velia Janetzky is project lead for the industrial metaverse at Siemens Electronics Factory Erlangen. Here, her tea...