Shows / Engineering Matters
Engineering Matters
Five times winner of the Publisher Podcast Awards, including Best Technology Podcast, Engineering Matters celebrates the work of engineers who use ingenuity, practicality, science, theory and determination to build a better world. In the UK alone 5.7million people work in engineering related enterprises from manufacturing and agriculture to construction and transportation. Their work ensures that the country has sustainable power supplies, better connectivity between cities, increasing…
Episodes
- Engineering Matters
#125 Artificial Intelligence in Project Planning
New software using AI is enabling planners to identify options for engineering projects that are beyond the realms of human imagination. Traditionally…
- Engineering Matters
#124 Mussels: How to Save the Seas
Intensive farming leads to nutrients seeping into the groundwater and into rivers. These enriched waterways deliver immense quantities of nutrients to coastal…
- Engineering Matters
#123 Engineering Plants: Intelligent Growth Solutions
The world is on the brink of a climate related disaster. The solution requires a combination of engineering disciplines that do not come together very often…
- Engineering Matters
#122 Decarbonisation: Growing Roads on Trees
In this episode we look at how a new plant-based bitumen will be incorporated into asphalt mixtures currently being developed. The hope is that this will allow…
- Engineering Matters
#121 Batteries: The Lithium-Silicon Age
After a decade of growth, there were 10 million electric cars on the world’s roads by the end of 2020. This growth trend is set to continue, with at least 145…
- Engineering Matters
#120 Recycled Plastic: The Canadian Potential
In 2019, Justin Trudeau declared war on plastic waste. And single-use plastics were listed as a toxic material in Canada in May of this year. Before long…
Engineering Matters#119 The Grange: Saving Time, Saving Lives
As COVID-19 rampaged across the UK in 2020, society shut down and hospitals reached breaking point. For engineers building The Grange University Hospital in…
- Engineering Matters
#118 Gateway: The Lunar Space Station
The last time a person walked on the moon was 14 December 1972. Almost 50 years ago. Since then, human operations have been confined to Earth orbit. But during…
- Engineering Matters
#117 How Sails Could Save Shipping
The first boats that harnessed the wind to skip over the waves may have been built 8,000 years ago. Several hundred years later, the earliest seaborne trading…
- Engineering Matters
#116 Climate Change: Islands on the Frontline
Island states are at the forefront of climate change. Rising sea levels mean more coastal erosion, overtopping of defences and salinification of land. More…
- Engineering Matters
#115 The Circular Road
In this episode we explain how one of the world’s biggest problems – plastic waste can be reused in state of the art, energy-efficient road-building products…
- Engineering Matters
#114 Engineering with Dogs
Ecologists on infrastructure projects have some new team members: Conservation dogs. Their superior olfactory systems mean that they can sniff out a plethora…
- Engineering Matters
#113 Food Waste: Making a Net Zero Jet Fuel
Every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted. The waste occurs all through the supply chain, from the farm itself, all the way to the household. It…
- Engineering Matters
#112 Hagerbach: The Bat Cave of Tunnelling
Every good superhero universe has its origins story. Hagerbach’s begins with Rudolf Amberg, looking to innovate and find new efficiency savings for his iron…
- Engineering Matters
#111 Machine Learning: Construction’s Future
When people think of digital tools to help with engineering problems, they usually think of a 3D model or a computerised image, representing something that…
- Engineering Matters
#110 London: Boosting Biodiversity
London is the world’s first national park city, with about 50% green coverage of its surface area. This is a legacy of the public and Royal parks, Victorian…
- Engineering Matters
#109 Spiders Versus Plastic
For millions of years spiders have been spinning naturally occurring proteins into an incredibly strong and durable silk. By studying the anatomy of these…
- Engineering Matters
#108 Antarctica: Building Rothera Wharf
Since the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, humanity has focused its activities in the southern continent on science and research. To do this…
- Engineering Matters
#107 Africa: Connecting a Continent
Preparation is currently underway for installation of one of the world’s longest fibre optic communications cables. Survey vessels are circumnavigating the…
Engineering Matters#106 A Beginner’s Guide to Social Value
Why do we build? Why develop society? And who reaps the benefit? In this episode we look at the new interest the construction industry is taking in quantifying…
- Engineering Matters
#105 Solar Grazing at Shaker Village
In a field a few miles southwest of the city of Lexington in Kentucky, a sheep is quietly grazing in the shade. This is a very special sheep. It has been…
- Engineering Matters
#104 Solving Rail’s Hidden Hazard
In 2019/20 an estimated 693,000 workers in Great Britain sustained a non-fatal injury at work in Great Britain. The figure, which comes from the Office of…
- Engineering Matters
#103 A Canadian Blueprint for Net Zero
What is Net Zero? And how can we get there? Can we mitigate the damage of three centuries of fossil fuel-powered industrialisation, with three decades of new…
- Engineering Matters
#102 Crushing Climate Change
Every two years the Peak District hosts ‘Hillhead’ in a disused quarry. It is the largest event for the Quarrying, Construction and Recycling industries. It is…
Engineering Matters#101 Powering and Protecting Scottish Heritage
Along the west coast of Scotland lies a chain of island communities where fishing and farming have been a way of life for thousands of years. In securing the…
- Engineering Matters
#100 Megaprojects (Part 3): Learning from Experience
This is the third and final episode of our three-part special looking at the delivery of megaprojects. In this episode we examine the lessons learned from two…
- Engineering Matters
#100 Megaprojects (Part 2): How to Deliver?
For the 100th episode of Engineering Matters we bring you this three-part special looking at the delivery of a megaproject. In this second episode, we look at…
- Engineering Matters
#100 Megaprojects (Part 1): What Makes a Megaproject?
Megaprojects are among the most complex and challenging of society’s undertakings. Each is grand is scope and due to the scale, none are ever built twice…
- Engineering Matters
#99 Urbanisation: Infrastructure for Growing Cities
Today the world holds 33 megacities, cities that are home to over 10 million people. As these sprawling urban centres become more crowded than ever before…
- Engineering Matters
#98 The Construction Playground
As projects grow ever more complex, with tighter delivery demands placed on the entire supply chain, a baseline of digitalisation has been essential for the…
- Engineering Matters
#97 The Gateway to Indonesia
To alleviate the burden on its largest city Jakarta, Indonesia is going to move its capital more than 1,000km from the densely populated island of Java, to…
- Engineering Matters
#97 (Indonesian) Bandara Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman Sepinggan
Dalam episode ini kami bermitra dengan Shell untuk membahas pengaspalan ulang landasan pacu (atau runway) Bandara Balikpapan – Bandara Sultan Aji Muhammad…
- Engineering Matters
#96 Fusion: Britain Builds a Star
In this episode we are looking at a project being run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority which aims to build a prototype fusion power plant by the 2040s. To do…
- Engineering Matters
#95 Saving Oceans with Science
The world’s oceans are in crisis. Plastic pollution, rising sea levels, warmer waters and chemical changes are degrading ocean systems and the world is at a…
- Engineering Matters
#94 Barriers to Data Rich Design
Construction has not always recognised the value of using data from past projects to deliver better results in the present. It often finds itself starting from…
- Engineering Matters
#93 Tomatoes and the Road to Net Zero
Something remarkable is happening in East Anglia. Waste heat from sewage treatment is being pumped into two enormous greenhouses creating low carbon heat for…
Engineering Matters#92 The Most Flooded Town In England
In this episode we partnered with WSP to tell the story of Looe, a fishing port in Cornwall. The small town has the dubious accolade of ‘most flooded place in…
- Engineering Matters
#91 Global Risks and Shapeshifting Infrastructure
With the weight of the built environment exceeding that of the total biomass for the first time, the human impact on the planet has passed a symbolic but…
- Engineering Matters
#90 The New Way to Plan a City
The data quality in the planning and development sector is appalling. Whether supplied in this form accidentally, negligently, or recklessly does not matter –…
- Engineering Matters
#89 Blue Lanes in the Black Country
A revolution is happening in the UK, and it is happening quietly. Inspired by the Copenhagen Bicycle Account, Bike Life is the biggest assessment of cycling in…
- Engineering Matters
#88 Engineering Trees
It is tree planting season in the UK. With their amazing carbon storage ability, flood alleviation capacity and biodiversity boosting potential, trees are fast…
- Engineering Matters
#87 So That Was 2020
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…
- Engineering Matters
#86 Enterprise Delivery: A Model for Recovery
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…
- Engineering Matters
#85 Concrete’s Role in the Climate War
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…
- Engineering Matters
#84 Asphalt of the Future
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…
- Engineering Matters
#83 Digitisation and the road to diversity
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…
- Engineering Matters
#82 Securing the Shugborough Tunnel
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…
- Engineering Matters
#81 Zen and the Art of Programme Management
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…
- Engineering Matters
#80 Covid 19: Construction Copes with the Pandemic
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…
- Engineering Matters
#79 Rebuilding Zandvoort’s Rollercoaster Racetrack
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…
- Engineering Matters
#78 Reinventing invention
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…
- Engineering Matters
#77 Floating Turbines: Offshore Wind’s Game Changer
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…
- Engineering Matters
#76 Building with Biomaterials
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…
- Engineering Matters
#75 Last Howl of the Vulcan
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…
- Engineering Matters
#74 Weaving a New Data Fabric for Infrastructure
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…
- Engineering Matters
#73 How to Build a Digital Twin
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…
- Engineering Matters
#72 Seeing the Himalayas: Kickstarting Net Zero
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…
- Engineering Matters
#71 Stewards of the Soil
Historically civilisations have sprung up wherever the land was most fertile, soils that supported good crop productivity to meet the food requirements of…
- Engineering Matters
#70 On Track for a Rail Revolution
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…
- Engineering Matters
#69 Artificial Intelligence in Infrastructure
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…