Engineering Matters

In late 1973 the UK’s Central Electricity Generating Board gained parliamentary approval to build the largest and most difficult pumped storage hydroelectric power station in its history. It was the largest civil engineering contract ever awarded by the government and became the biggest construction project in Europe. Engineering teams had to burrow 750m deep into the Cambrian slate of Elidir Fawr mountain at Dinorwig, North Wales to create the underground power station and a 16km labyrinth of tunnels up to 10.5m in diameter linking upper and lower reservoirs. 

It’s scale and complexity pushed the limits of design and construction with engineers developing state of the art practices for rock reinforcement and concrete design and pioneering new construction methods. As the station celebrates 40 years of operation and looks ahead to a bright future as a battery for renewable energy, we speak with the people that planned, designed and constructed electric mountain hearing stories that have never been told before.

Guests

Kin Almond, supervising civil engineer, James Williamson & Partners 

John Armstrong, station manager Dinorwig and Ffestiniog, First Hydro

James Arthur – senior engineer, James Williamson & Partners

John Cowie – associate, James Williamson & Partners 

Chris Roberts, commissioning engineer, Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB)

Dyfrig Roberts – assistant engineer, James Williamson & Partners

Robin Thomas – civil engineering technician, James Williamson & Partners 

Ian Waite – project surveyor, James Williamson & Partners 

Musical recording of “Tydi a Roddaist” used with the permission of the Caernarfon male voice choir who performed in the excavated machine hall in 1979.

Partner

Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management and development consultancy focussed on improving society by considering social outcomes and relentlessly focussing on excellence and digital innovation. James Williamson & Partners became part of Mott MacDonald in 1990.

Germany needs 70GW of offshore wind power connected to its grid by 2045, part of an estimated 300GW total capacity by 2050 for all of the nations bordering the North Sea. To achieve that ambitious goal it needs to run power cables through the Wadden Sea, the world’s largest system of intertidal sands and mudflats. The area is difficult to work within due to its dynamic environment, sensitive habitats, and bird nesting locations contributing to its World Heritage site status.

The North Sea itself is no picnic, and extensive surveys need to be carried out, and actioned, at a pace unthinkable without the use of cutting edge technology and clever programme management. Beyond the challenging offshore conditions, developers must navigate competing uses of sea, including shipping routes, military practice areas and other designated use areas. This work can be carried out throughout the year with special rigs, uncrewed surface vessels and remotely operated vehicles. The resulting data  is collated and analysed through cloud-based platforms and advanced AI tools to provide the optimal routes for power cables. The routes are refined and optimised as new survey information becomes available and additional sea-use constraints are introduced by the government and the market.

In this episode Fugro, along with German grid operator TenneT, set out the challenges of working in the narrow German economic zone, as the industry races to meet these connection requirements ahead of a volatile geopolitical situation, and the hungry grid of Europe’s industrial powerhouse.

Guests

Dr Anja Drews, Lead – Lead Offshore Route Engineering, TenneT

Mathias Drücker, Senior Advisor for Political Affairs, TenneT

Tony Greig, Solution Owner – Offshore Power Cables, Fugro

Connor Schulze, Business Operations Manager, Marine Cables and Hydrography, Fugro

Resources

For more information on Target Grid, TenneT’s vision for the electricity grid of 2045, click here

For more information on the Wadden Sea World Heritage site, click here

For more information on the WaveWalker mentioned in this episode, see episode #233 Rebuilding the Dawlish Sea Wall

Partner

Fugro is the world’s leading geo-data specialist, collecting and analysing comprehensive information about the Earth and the structures built upon it. Through integrated data acquisition, analysis and advice, Fugro unlocks insights from geo-data to help clients design, build and operate their assets in a safe, sustainable and efficient manner.

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy turned sharply west and drove a storm surge into New York Harbor. Lower Manhattan flooded, a substation failed leaving more than 220,000 people without power, and damage across the wider region reached $65–70 billion.

Protecting the Lower East Side from the next storm means threading flood walls, berms and deployable gates through one of the densest parts of the city. Defences sit above generations of utilities: sewers, water mains, power and telecommunications infrastructure. Works also had to avoid separating communities, while ensuring access to city parks and the waterfront.

Engineering capacity is stretched by modern demands, and extreme weather poses increasing risks. Engineers need new approaches that enable them to evaluate and test more options, more quickly and effectively than ever before. Artificial intelligence, digital twins, and open data approaches provide the tools to do just that.

These technologies can reduce tasks such as floodgate analysis from 30 hours to just 30 minutes. Across the infrastructure lifecycle, digital advancements are boosting efficiency and improving outcomes, transforming once cost-prohibitive concepts into the resilient infrastructure systems that society depends on.

Guests

Roni Deitz, Global Director for Climate Adaptation, Arcadis

Gregg Herrin, Vice President for Water, Bentley Systems

Resources

To read more about the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, click here

Watch the floodgates in action here

Partner

Around the world, infrastructure professionals rely on software from Bentley Systems to help them design, build, and operate better and more resilient infrastructure for transportation, water, energy, cities, and more. Founded in 1984 by engineers for engineers, Bentley is the partner of choice for engineering firms and owner-operators worldwide, with software that spans engineering disciplines, industry sectors, and all phases of the infrastructure lifecycle.

In this episode, we celebrate Showerkap, winner of the Innovation Champion category in the Engineering Matters Awards 2026. The final award of the series. Judged by representatives from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Engineers Without Borders UK, the award recognises innovation across all of this year’s categories.

Showerkap won gold for technology designed to reduce the water and energy wasted in showers. Its system uses sensors to monitor showers at fixture level, helping building operators understand water use and spot maintenance problems. Its patented valve technology can also encourage people to take shorter showers by gradually reducing the flow of water, rather than imposing a fixed limit.

We learn about how the technology works and the role small changes in behaviour could play in tackling water waste.

Guest

Carly Hunt, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Board Member, Showerkap  

In this Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate the winner of the Net Zero Champion category, which recognises projects, processes, and tools that make a real contribution to reducing carbon emissions. The highest awards were to be given to those entries that demonstrate significant impact or widespread scope, or that overcome a specific challenge.

Our gold-level award-winning entrant was Ceres Power for its solid oxide technology, which can generate electricity with high efficiency while avoiding the combustion and associated emissions of conventional power generation. We explore how Ceres’ technology could help meet rapidly growing electricity demand, including from data centres, while supporting the transition to a lower-carbon energy system.

Guest

Nick Lawrence, Chief Product Officer, Ceres Power

Resources

For McKinsey’s report, Global Energy Perspective 2025, click here 

For more information about the Ceres Endura and more from Ceres Power, click here

Returning to the Moon is the next step, but staying there is the next leap. Abrasive and electrostatically-charged dust particles cling to every surface, and find their way into every mechanism, while a radiation-blasted lunar surface swings from 130°C in the sun to a brisk -173°C in the shade.

To survive and thrive in the lunar wasteland, we will need habitat modules, power plants, autonomous rovers, drilling equipment and more: a fleet of machinery that needs to survive these hostile conditions.

How we design these machines will be critical, how lubricants behave in extreme temperatures and hard vacuum is yet to be determined. But engineers are beginning to answer some of these questions.

Guest

Chris Lockett, Chief Technology Officer, Castrol

Resources

To watch the Drive Me to the Moon documentary, click here

To listen to the Engineering Matters episode on in-situ space resource utilisation, click here

In this Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate the winner of the Sustainability Champion category, which recognises organisations driving groundbreaking innovation to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It promotes the conservation of natural resources, reduces waste and pollution, and supports social and economic stability.

Our award-winning entrant is the Nuclear Manufacturing Group at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), whose team partnered with Cambridge Vacuum Engineering and Kairos Power to pioneer electron beam welding for Small Modular Reactor (SMR) vessels. Their breakthrough reduces vessel welding times from 500 hours down to just five hours, eliminates hundreds of kilograms of filler wire, and dramatically cuts manufacturing energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Guest

Charles Carpenter, Head of Research for the Nuclear Manufacturing Group, University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre

Resources

To read more about the project discussed in this episode, read the Kairos Power Report

How should local and regional leaders encourage investment in their communities? Around the world, cities struggle with a legacy of industrial decline. In England, devolution of planning policy to mayoral combined authorities has allowed for regions like Greater Manchester to outpace national growth. But within regions, local areas can themselves fall behind, and require a joined up approach to planning and investment.

When this episode was first recorded in September 2024, the focus was on how places can unlock investment by understanding their own histories, strengths and opportunities. Today, as the debate around Britain’s infrastructure ambitions intensifies, and the former Mayor of Greater Manchester looks increasingly likely to become the next Prime Minister, the intentions of the government in this area are worthy of speculation.

The infrastructure industry is not waiting, an open letter from leading infrastructure and construction organisations, including the Association for Consultancy has called on the next government to prioritise long-term infrastructure delivery and provide greater certainty for investment.

Could the principles of Manchester transfer to the nation at large? Will infrastructure be a priority for the incoming government? Can the required investment be funded? The engineering sector waits to see.

Guests

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester

Susan Hinchliffe, Council Leader, Bradford City Council

Tim Newns, MD, Levelling Up, Office for Investment, UK Department for International Trade

Richard Robinson, CEO, UK and Europe, AtkinsRéalis

John Rayson, MD for Northern Transformation, AtkinsRéalis

Resources

For the open letter from the ACE to Andy Burnham, click here

At the end of the Second World War, millions of tonnes of unwanted explosives and weapons were disposed of at sea. For decades, these dumped munitions lay hidden beneath the waves as time and tide passed over them.

Now 80 years past that mass-dumping, corrosion has begun to expose the explosive chemicals inside these weapons casings. Lead, mercury and TNT breakdown products have begun to be detected in fish stocks throughout the affected waters. At the same time, the growth of offshore infrastructure such as wind farms is increasing the need to understand and manage hazards on the seabed.

But dumped munitions are not the same problem as unexploded ordnance (UXO). Instead of finding isolated dangerous objects, engineers face vast areas containing thousands of items, requiring new approaches to detection, removal, containment and disposal. This is a question of new technologies, new approaches, and still yet, convincing people of the scale of the problem.

Guests

Torsten Frey, post-doctoral researcher, Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel

Peter Nieuwveld, Solution Owner UXO Risk Mitigation, Fugro

Jennifer Yun, New Business Manager, Fugro

Resources

Sign up for the CAMMera & MMinE-SwEEPER Newsletter: http://bit.ly/3PDUcPj 

Visit JPI Oceans Knowledge Portal for Munitions in the Sea: http://munitionsinthesea.eu/ 

Check out Munitions in the Sea Projects booklet: Munitions_booklet_October_2025.pdf

Check out UNOC 2025 Munitions in the Sea Factsheets: https://tinyurl.com/2x35pwwu

For the Engineering Matters episode on UXO mitigation, click here

Photo credit: Lukas Schröder

Partner

Fugro is the world’s leading geo-data specialist, collecting and analysing comprehensive information about the Earth and the structures built upon it. Through integrated data acquisition, analysis and advice, Fugro unlocks insights from geo-data to help clients design, build and operate their assets in a safe, sustainable and efficient manner.

In this Engineering Matters Awards episode, we celebrate the winners of the Health & Safety Champion category, which recognises engineers who are changing how we protect people in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

Engineering is often measured by what we build: the bridges, tunnels, infrastructure, and systems that shape our world. But true engineering excellence is also defined by how we build, and how we protect the people who make it possible. This episode explores how innovation, preparation, and predictive technology are helping to reduce risk and improve safety across the board.

Our two award-winning entrants are:

Scott Shipley, Director of Swiftwater and Whitewater Parks at Caliber Engineering, who is transforming emergency response training by creating realistic, controlled environments where first responders can prepare for extreme flooding scenarios.

Monica Calle, co-founder and CTO of Geprode, is using predictive analytics to address one of underground construction’s biggest challenges: geological uncertainty.