Engineering Matters

Around the world, urban planners are seeking to deliver urban growth and increase access to city centres through the development of transit-oriented communities. These combine new publicly-backed transport infrastructure, with privately-financed residential and commercial development. It’s a route to more sustainable cities, but it involves careful navigation of budgetary constraints and the needs of existing communities.

Michael Matthys explains some of the challenges of delivering transit-oriented communities in Toronto. He explains some of the challenges, both in terms of engineering, and in terms of meeting community needs. For stations in crowded downtown areas, he describes the im...

In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia, buoyed by a surge in oil prices, embarked on an ambitious building programme. The country moved rapidly to develop its cities and infrastructure. However, Prince Salman, then the governor of Riyadh, now the country’s King, saw that this was resulting in cities that were unmoored from their local context.

This episode traces the evolution of modern architecture in Saudi Arabia, from the economic boom of the 1970s and the development of a distinctive Salmani-style. We look at the national program of incorporating the vernacular in individual buildings, before moving on to th...

For facade specialists, stone is highly prized for its performance and character. The right choice of stone can anchor a building in its local context, or make a striking statement. While stone has fallen out of use, modern approaches mean that it could now be used in the same standardised ways as steel, concrete and glass. 

In this episode we learn that it is ripe for a return as a structural material, decades after it was supplanted by concrete and steel.

A series of projects demonstrate how stone can be used as a structural component. F...

Sustainability experts often use a hierarchy to help their thinking about interventions. The best way to limit your impact is to do nothing at all. If that’s not possible, then use as few materials as you can. And finally, if extensive work must be conducted, then replace more carbon-intensive materials with those with less impacts.

In this episode, Lucas Grisoni describes three projects in Paris that demonstrate different approaches to sustainable construction. For the University of Chicago’s new campus, the focus has been on reducing the use of materials, both in order to keep the stru...

Lifecycle carbon assessment – the process of monitoring the total carbon footprint of a structure from the first spade in the ground to demolition – sits at the confluence of engineering and sustainability. As we adapt our processes and understanding of the built environment, LCA is a critical measure to guide our decision making.

The nature of the work is truly holistic, in winter an icy road might have salt spread on it. This in turn could corrode rebar, which needs to be replaced. That work might close part of the road, which increases vehicle idling times and stop-start driv...

Retrofitting is an instrumental step in reducing the carbon footprint of a city’s building stock. It also extends the life of a building and has a lower environmental impact than demolishing inefficient properties and building anew.

Even a new development, such as the East Village in Stratford London, although just 12 years old, is still largely heated by fossil fuel. Adaptable designs are critical to bring future improvements to existing structures.

Marion Baeli is a pioneer of sustainable architecture, her practice identified easy-to-deliver improvements to energy use on one of the buildings in the development, at...

When you are designing a stadium for the World Cup, or any major sport, it’s vital to have a fan’s-eye view. For more than a century, the architects tasked with designing stadiums have used the C-value, developed by Victorian theatre designer John Russel. But this value just measures the view in one direction, towards the stage. Sporting events are viewed in the round, with fans all around the stadium bowl.

In this episode, we hear from Mark Fenwick, whose practice has designed stadiums for the Qatar World Cup, and for leading European football teams. He expl...

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, and long term project: Hinkley Point C. He explains the challenges of clash detection on a project that has continued...

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 edge of physics.

The reactor building is being constructed using thousands of ste...

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 environment. This means a shift from reacting to problems, to planning with goals being measured.

Countries like...

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 need for more resilient approaches to town and city planning, that anticipate extreme events and protect communities a...

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 adaptability to these changes. 

In this introduction to a series on sustainable approaches to the global built environment, we begin a j...

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 should employ competent professionals. The challenge these dutyholders now face is to identify those professionals.

The Eng...

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 of small earthquakes and setting foundations floating off the apparently solid sand they stood on.

Assumptions about gr...

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 Khalaf, Regional Business Line Manager, Middle East, at Fugro, explains how one client commissioned a new method of site screening, ambient noise...

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 approach that builds certainty from the ground up. In this first episode, Rod Eddies, Solutions Director, Land, at Fugro, explains the development of...

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 regulations that get tighter as we learn of new threats to human life and the environment, are putting wastewater treatment facilities under strain. Existing plants are...

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 feeding local communities and boosting economies. They sequester carbon, helping limit climate change. They provide opportunities for tourism. And they provide significant flood protection...

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 at all.

As part of Bentley Systems Year In Infrastructure series of events, Mark Coates hosted a panel discussion on the...

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 Institution of Chartered Surveyors. In the absence of a national programme for measuring the carbon impact...

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 other offshore industries, this could be achieved by inspecting assets on a fi...

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 require new global partnerships between friendly nations. And these require careful synchronisation of major engineering projects, spanning the globe.In this episode, we...

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 of the stars she experienced during the weeks of polar night, inspired a new goal: to wo...

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 sector in 2018, with the release of the report In Plain Sight. This emphasised the importance of...

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 businesses. Often, with the growth of domestic solar, the power we use in...

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 episode, first aired in April 2024, we look at the deve...

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 in the world. In Brevik, Norway, Heidelberg Materials’ first cement plant with carbon capture attached is now oper...

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 to a matter of centimetres.

The technology optimises safety and minimises risk in space by improving collision avoidance. But it also go...

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 infrastructure repairs. Parametric insurance pays out within days when specific conditions—flooding depth, rainfall—are met, without the need for damage assessment.

To p...

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) and OT (operational technology) have evolved into parallel threads. On the production line, automation engineers use visual languages, based on electrica...

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 team has been developing processes that marry the real and the virtual, to achieve ambitious e...

Alan Lusty founded adi Group, a multidisciplinary engineering business supporting major manufacturers. He is part of a group that offers engineering services in 23 sectors, with over 750 employees. But he left school at 16 without qualifications, instead pursuing an apprenticeship.

At adi Group, more than 10% of employees are apprentices: double the rate set as a target by The 5% Club apprenticeship advocacy scheme. As a Platinum member of the scheme, adi Group has a clear track record of supporting apprentices. In 2018, prime minister Theresa May and chancellor Philip Hammond visited adi Group and met some of the apprentices. In the...

Electrification of construction equipment is an ongoing and necessary part of the global effort to reduce carbon emissions and restrict global warming. Sixty years ago, Fugro developed the first commercial cone penetration testing equipment to run on electrical power, and today it is continuing on that journey by electrifying the machine that carries it. What is more, it is employing this battery technology onto a new state of the art machine that goes deeper than ever before to get more data about the ground beneath our feet.

This journey of innovation is not one that it has...

On two major road projects in the UK work was completed on time and under budget. But not every project can claim such success. Defects, delays and cost overruns plague projects around the world.

Projects such as those at Junction 10 on the M25 London orbital motorway, and on a stretch of the A19 near Teesside in England’s north east, are inherently complex. Every change will cause ripples throughout the supply chain, and potentially impact schedules and costs. But this, AtkinsRéalis’s Kelly Burdall argues, isn’t the root cause of the problem. Instead, she explains, we shou...

Nature has long served as a blueprint for engineering breakthroughs from the kingfisher-inspired design of Japan’s Bullet Train to termite mounds that inform energy-efficient buildings. Siemens Digital Industries is taking this concept further by combining biomimicry with digital technology to tackle sustainability challenges across entire industries. Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability at Siemens, explains how looking beyond individual components to view entire systems can reveal powerful opportunities to reduce waste, optimise processes, and rethink how we measure success.

One powerful example is Ekonoke, a company growing hops in fully controlled indoor environments. With Siemens’ support, Ekonoke scal...

In this episode, we spotlight the remarkable work of the Lightyear Foundation, the winner of the Engineering Matters Awards 2025 Gold Champion for Diversity and Inclusion. The foundation is the only UK charity dedicated to engaging disabled and neurodivergent young people with STEM.

Chief Executive Jeff Banks and Senior Programme Manager Emma Zeale explain how the charity uses immersive sensory science, STEM workplace trips, and specially designed Lightyear Labs to ignite curiosity and boost confidence in children who are often excluded from traditional STEM education. With 75% of their staff and trustees identifying as disabled or neurodivergent, Lightyear leads...

At a quarry in Turkey, heavy haul trucks are carrying hundreds of tonnes of materials, with no external power. It’s not quite perpetual motion, but it is removing the need for diesel or cables on a hard working site.

NUH Cement commissioned ABB to repower a 30-year-old Euclid haul truck. The truck collects loads from a hill top quarry, carries them downhill, and then returns uphill empty. That gave the team at ABB an idea: rather than losing the gravity energy of the load to braking, why not capture it and use it to power the tr...

LongPath Technologies has taken Nobel-winning discoveries, and applied them to a key cause of climate change: methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. The sector now turns to LongPath to establish monitoring across facilities. But as LongPath sought to scale from innovation to commercialization, it turned to Red Pitaya for a vital component.

In this episode we tell the story of LongPath, and how their laser-based methane monitoring has been developed over the past decade. We learn how this work was enabled by a cheap and highly configurable processing board from Red Pitaya. And we discover why...

In 2016 management consultants McKinsey released a report that reverberated around the construction and engineering sectors. This sector, the report said, was consistently delivering projects late—often 20% longer to finish than expected—and over budget: by as much as 80%. The report’s authors pointed out that the tools that could resolve these delays and cost overruns, quite simply weren’t being picked up. Now, nearly a decade on, has the sector made progress?

In this episode, we speak to three AtkinsRéalis experts about the sector’s progress. Sam Stephens describes the origins of digital construction, explaining how offshore in...

Generative AI has swept across our society. In every app, up it pops, eager to offer a helping hand. The opportunity to talk to computer systems as if they are human, or to create memes at unprecedented speed, has great appeal for many. But is it ready to do the hard work at the heart of our economy?

Not yet, perhaps, but soon, AI systems will be working alongside humans in industrial engineering offices and on the shop floor. They will present design choices for engineers, guided by a deep understanding of the sector they work in...