Engineering Matters show

Engineering Matters

Summary: Three 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 efficiency in production processes; advanced manufacturing methods; and is embracing the digital transformations that include virtual modelling of our environment, and development of intelligent machines. Our episodes will examine the vital work of engineers using a mix of interviews, analysis and site visits.

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Podcasts:

 #75 Last Howl of the Vulcan | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 23:23

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 always been a crowd favourite at air shows.  As well as the immense noise generated by its four Rolls Royce Olympus engines, which has thrilled children...

 #74 Weaving a New Data Fabric for Infrastructure | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 31:57

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 decision-making that takes into account whole life costing, and tell you where best to spend money, to save more money in future. We all understand this concept in our own lives;...

 #73 How to Build a Digital Twin | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 29:51

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 mitigate this shortfall it is constructing hundreds of kilometres of large diameter pipeline, as well as pumping stations and storage points to divert water from areas with...

 #72 Seeing the Himalayas: Kickstarting Net Zero | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 30:54

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 many of them had never seen before. The skies were so clear that for the first time in decades the soaring peaks of the Himalayas standing almost...

 #71 Stewards of the Soil | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 26:19

Historically civilisations have sprung up wherever the land was most fertile, soils that supported good crop productivity to meet the food requirements of highly concentrated groups of people. Now with the global population close to 8 billion, and all arable land already committed to food production, we are turning to technology to help fertilise soils...

 #70 On Track for a Rail Revolution | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 38:25

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 opened in 1825 and connected coal mines in the northeast of England. It was the metal track, the coal-fired furnace, and the shrill whistle of the...

 #69 Artificial Intelligence in Infrastructure | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 20:38

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. Asset owners and local authorities have been under pressure for years to find a cost-effective way of monitoring and maintaining their underground infrastructure. And now, engineers in Switzerland have turned...

 #68 The Future of Design | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 34:49

Changes to the way we do design are coming; construction is languishing at the bottom of the productivity rankings, now below hunting and fishing.  Decision-making is happening late in the project lifecycle, meaning that design work has to be repeated unnecessarily, and a reward culture based on price rather than outcomes builds in more inefficiency....

 #67 The Future is Remote and Autonomous | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 35:25

Remotely operated vehicles, uncrewed surface vessels and ever-increasing autonomy are removing personnel from dangerous work offshore in the North Sea and elsewhere.  Inspection of maritime assets is now being controlled from onshore operations centres. We look at one of these command and control centres, the Fugro facility in Aberdeen. With a robust regulatory framework and...

 #66 Fever Screening in Airports | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 27:06

As a small island trading nation, Britain risks killing its economy and losing millions of jobs, unless it can allow people to get back to work in as normal a way as possible. So said John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport, who wants to see a more sophisticated way of opening our borders. He was...

 #65 Every Little Helps | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 25:09

At the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, one of the few reasons people were allowed to leave their homes was to shop for the basic essentials.  Social distancing rules meant that shoppers were held in long queues that wound through supermarket car parks, moving slowly. One supermarket in northern England had the added problem of...

 #64 EDAROTH | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 29:53

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...

 #63 Nine Days to Build a Hospital | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 28:34

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...

 #62 The Washing Machine Project | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 25:30

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...

 #61 Countdown to British launch | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 23:01

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...

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