Engineering Matters

How new technology is supporting the UK’s offshore wind industry to bring down costs and accelerate construction. From new methods for drilling into the seabed, to advanced foundation design models and improved data capture, innovation is critical for this fast-growing market. But it won’t be easy. Deeper waters and variable ground conditions make these some...

Over the past two decades the UK has become the world’s leading offshore wind energy producer. Not only is it responsible for 40% of all offshore wind generated electricity, it is set to quadruple the installed capacity by 2030. Its journey to becoming a world leader began in 2000 with construction of just two Vestas...

From new immersive technologies to life saving applications, virtual reality is finally meeting up to expectations of the 1990s and transforming the way that projects are designed. Its ability to improve visualisation of new and existing infrastructure is bringing many benefits, including some that users hadn’t anticipated as well as saving millions of pounds in...

This week we are bringing you an episode of our newly launched Tunnelling Podcast, made in partnership with the British Tunnelling Society. In March 1999, the Mont Blanc tunnel fire claimed the lives of 38 tunnel users and one fire fighter. For decades debate has raged over the best approach to tackling a fire, saving...

Last year the UK set a legally binding target to become carbon neutral by 2050, ahead of any other major global economy. In doing so it took the first ambitious steps on a massively difficult path, and the road to net zero requires a total overhaul of how infrastructure is designed, delivered and managed. In...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...