Engineering Matters

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#348 Modelling Distributed Energy Storage Oct 16, 2025

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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...

#347 Revisited: The Pipeline to Net Zero Oct 09, 2025

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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...

#346 Scaling Carbon-Free Cement Oct 02, 2025

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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...

#345 Pinpoint Precision in Space Positioning Sep 25, 2025

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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....

#344 Networks Under Water: Transport, Flooding and Resilience Sep 18, 2025

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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...

#343 Weaving Software into Automation Sep 11, 2025

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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...

#342 Real Solutions and the Industrial Metaverse Aug 14, 2025

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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,...

#341 Opening the Door to Engineering – Engineering Matters Awards winners Aug 07, 2025

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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...

#340 Diving Deep into Electric Machinery Jul 31, 2025

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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...

#339 Integrated Contracts and Innovative Delivery Jul 24, 2025

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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...

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