Engineering Matters

Latest Episodes:

#268 Mastering Time: The Challenge of Time Synchronisation Mar 21, 2024

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Timekeeping has been a pursuit fraught with challenges throughout history. From ancient sundials to mechanical clocks, humanity has continuously sought methods to measure time with greater accuracy. Technology has given us new ways to measure time, but also demands more accurate synchronisation. Time synchronisation stands as a linchpin in modern technology, ensuring coherence and accuracy...

#267 AI and Humanity, with Darren Martin Mar 14, 2024

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With the launch of ChatGPT, the power of generative AI has captured public attention. Systems like this can not only work through millions of options, like earlier chess-playing supercomputers, but develop original ideas that might not occur to humans, used to working within proven traditional approaches. New techniques of advanced information processing like this, promise...

#266 Building Communities Together Mar 12, 2024

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Cities around the world face a housing crisis. In countries like the UK, local authorities struggle to finance projects and to find space for development. In faster growing and younger cities, it can be a challenge to ensure services and infrastructure are developed at the same pace as new housing. Urban development requires a clear...

#265 Tunnelling Innovation: Inventing the Bentonite Shield Mar 07, 2024

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Sixty years ago a civil engineer called John Bartlett of Mott, Hay & Anderson had a revolutionary idea. He noticed that bentonite clay could be used in a slurry to stabilise the face of tunnels during excavation. This could prevent non-cohesive, water bearing soils from collapsing inwards making excavation safer and cheaper. The first...

#264 Finding Career Pathways into Social Value Feb 29, 2024

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Social Value is a term that has been used to mean the additional benefits a company can provide to wider society beyond their business as usual. In the built environment, where infrastructure projects can already lead to negative consequences for local communities, considering how a company or project can provide real opportunities and benefits to...

#263 The Tipping Point Feb 22, 2024

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Digitalisation is changing every part of the economy. Modern mobile cranes have been developed based on some of the most fundamental concepts in engineering, many of which were first described by Archimedes. But here too, advances in sensors, computing power, and data transfer have been transformational. What can this meeting of modern and ancient tell...

#262 The Engineering Matters Awards – Net Zero, part 3 Feb 17, 2024

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This March, the industry will gather at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London, for the inaugural Engineering Matters Awards. Over two weeks of episodes, we’ll be introducing all of the shortlisted entries. The Awards will demonstrate why engineering matters. We’ll be sharing some exciting innovations. And we will be looking at a range of ways...

#261 The Engineering Matters Awards – Net Zero, part 2 Feb 16, 2024

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#260 The Engineering Matters Awards – Net Zero, part 1 Feb 15, 2024

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#259 The Engineering Matters Awards – Innovation, part 3 Feb 14, 2024

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