In 2016 management consultants McKinsey released a report that reverberated around the construction and engineering sectors. This sector, the report said, was consistently delivering projects late—often 20% longer to finish than expected—and over budget: by as much as 80%. The report’s authors pointed out that the tools that could resolve these delays and cost overruns, quite simply weren’t being picked up. Now, nearly a decade on, has the sector made progress?

In this episode, we speak to three AtkinsRéalis experts about the sector’s progress. Sam Stephens describes the origins of digital construction, explaining how offshore incidents in the 1990s led to the mandatory use of BIM on public sector projects in the UK. Lisa Brown examines the challenges facing construction firms as they adopt digital tools, and explains how AtkinsRéalis has adopted a strategic approach to their adoption and deployment. And Jack Li describes the potential boost AI will bring to the sector, and the need to train young engineers to ensure they can bring human discernment to machine-powered efficiency.

Guests

Sam Stephens, Head of Digital, Nuclear, AtkinsRéalis

Lisa Brown, VP, Transformation and Digital, Canada, AtkinsRéalis

Jack Li, Global Head of Future Focus and AI, AtkinsRéalis

Partner

AtkinsRéalis is a world-leading professional services and project management company dedicated to engineering a better future for our planet and its people. Employing over 37,000 people across Canada, the US and Latin America, the UK and Ireland, and Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, AtkinsRéalis creates sustainable solutions that connect people, data and technology to transform the world’s infrastructure and energy systems.

The post #334 Digital Construction’s Past, Present and Future first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Generative AI has swept across our society. In every app, up it pops, eager to offer a helping hand. The opportunity to talk to computer systems as if they are human, or to create memes at unprecedented speed, has great appeal for many. But is it ready to do the hard work at the heart of our economy?

Not yet, perhaps, but soon, AI systems will be working alongside humans in industrial engineering offices and on the shop floor. They will present design choices for engineers, guided by a deep understanding of the sector they work in, and appropriately constrained by safety and other requirements. They will identify which parts on a production machine require replacement, finding alternatives for those no longer available, and producing wiring diagrams, bills of materials, and documentation, with minimal human oversight.

Unlocking a future industrial sector where dirty, dull and dangerous jobs are performed by AIs, often acting through human-like robots, will demand new approaches to AI development, and to supply chain collaboration. Rather than the ‘one window’ approach of generalist tools, industrial AI will deploy specialist agents, their actions coordinated by orchestrators, trained on engineering data and informed by industry semantics.

Guests

Boris Scharinger, AI Strategist, Siemens Digital Industries

Vlad Larichev, Industrial AI Lead, DACH, Accenture

Julius Bockamp, Technology Scout, Advanced Production Technology, Schaeffler

Partner

Siemens Digital Industries 

Siemens Digital Industries (DI) empowers companies of all sizes in the process and discrete manufacturing industries to accelerate their digital and sustainability transformation across the entire value chain. Siemens’ cutting-edge automation and software portfolio revolutionizes the design, realization and optimization of products and production. And with Siemens Xcelerator – the open digital business platform – this process is made even easier, faster, and more scalable. Along with our partners and ecosystem, Siemens Digital Industries enables customers to become a sustainable digital enterprise. Siemens Digital Industries has a workforce of about 70,000 people worldwide.

The post #333 Agents of Change – AI in Industry first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Airports are at the forefront of a global transformation, rethinking their role not just as transport hubs but as sustainable, connected cities of the future. In this episode we explore how airports around the world are responding to environmental pressures, technological advancements, and increasing passenger demands. From Hong Kong’s ambitious runway reclamation to Heathrow’s efforts to expand sustainably, we unpack the complex challenges and exciting innovations shaping the future of air travel infrastructure.

Our guests George Davies, Meghan Sheehan, and Jeremy Lee, each bring unique perspectives from the UK, US, and Asia, offering a global overview of how different regions are tackling infrastructure constraints, passenger experience upgrades, and the transition to low-carbon operations. Their insights reveal the balancing act between growth, sustainability, and community impact.

We learn how airports are embracing flexible, future-ready design, from better integration with public transport to preparing for sustainable aviation fuels like SAF and hydrogen. We’ll hear how digital tools, AI, and biometrics are streamlining passenger journeys and why collaboration across borders is key to delivering smarter, greener airports. Whether it’s reclaiming land from the sea or unlocking bottlenecks in airspace, this episode captures how aviation is engineering a more sustainable and efficient tomorrow.

Guests

George Davies, Director for Sustainable Aviation, AtkinsRéalis 

Meghan Sheehan, Deputy US Aviation Manager, AtkinsRéalis 

Jeremy Lee Chartered Civil Engineer, AtkinsRéalis

Partners

AtkinsRéalis is a world-leading professional services and project management company dedicated to engineering a better future for our planet and its people. Employing over 37,000 people across Canada, the US and Latin America, the UK and Ireland, and Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, AtkinsRéalis creates sustainable solutions that connect people, data and technology to transform the world’s infrastructure and energy systems.

The post #332 The Future of Airports Around the World first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In the second half of the 20th Century, the world was transformed through infrastructure construction. New roads and railways, levees and power lines, delivered unprecedented comfort and convenience, and laid the foundation for an economy driven by easy transport and trade. But today, as many governments struggle with budgetary constraints and the need to balance decarbonisation with growth, that infrastructure is reaching the end of its design life.

Design life does not set a limit on an assets’ safe and productive use. But it does mark the target the original architects and engineers aimed for when they designed and built this infrastructure. Now, their successors must reconsider each asset’s health, and come up with a plan for its replacement or ongoing use.

If a structure must be demolished and replaced, asset owners face heavy carbon and financial costs. But by truly understanding these assets, they can focus this investment where it is needed and will have the most impact.

In this episode, we learn how engineers and asset owners can work together to collect this data, and identify cost- and carbon-effective solutions. The Netherlands has led the way in infrastructure development, for hundreds of years. Since 1848, this has been overseen by Rijkwaterstaat (RWS), the agency responsible for the country’s famed canals, as well as its roads. 

We learn how RWS has worked with geo-data specialists Fugro to make the best use of existing transport assets, as demand for them has soared; and we hear how cost-effective sensors have been used to monitor the impact of a specific failure mechanism affecting tunnels across the country, allowing them to safely remain open, without unnecessary interventions.

Guests

Edo Noordermeer, Business Consultant, Monitoring, Fugro

Patrick Bakhuizen, Commercial Director, Infrastructure, Fugro

Harry Dekker, Senior Adviser, Tunnels and Geo-Engineering, Rijkwaterstaat

Diederick Bouwmeester, Manager, Geotech, The Netherlands, Fugro

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.

The post #331 Life Extension for Infrastructure first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Helping the next generation achieve their full potential doesn’t just take commitment from their parents or carers, or from professionals like teachers. It takes, as the saying goes, a village. In Derby, nuclear engineer Katie Jarman has assembled the equivalent of a village full of volunteer maths tutors, all recruited from her employer Rolls-Royce, to help local school children achieve their academic and career goals.

Working with local schools, Katie and more than a hundred Rolls-Royce volunteers dedicate an hour a week of their time, over six weeks, to support and encourage children as they prepare for their maths GCSEs. These end-of-school exams can be vital to progressing on to further and higher education, and to careers in engineering and elsewhere.

In this episode, part of our series on Engineering Matters Awards Gold Champions, Katie tells us how she set the programme up, and why it is helping Rolls-Royce strengthen its business. As she explains, this is a programme that is ready for emulation by engineering businesses around the world. 

Guest

Katie Jarman, assistant chief engineer, Rolls-Royce Novel Nuclear

The post #330 A Village Full of Maths Tutors – Engineering Matters Awards’ winners episode first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Ben Gibbons and his colleagues at Circular11 are developing ways to add value to hard-to-recycle light plastics. They take packaging, and turn it into a lumber-equivalent, suitable for long term use as post and rail fencing. But to maintain tight loops of circularity, they needed to understand the supply chain they were targeting.

National Highways designed a programme to help innovators like Circular11 scale their ideas. The sustainable plastic re-use business, alongside three other start-ups, went all the way through to the final phase—live trials on the UK’s strategic roads network—of this Acceleration Low Carbon Innovation programme, organised with the help of the Connected Places Catapult.

The accelerator was awarded Gold Champion in the Net Zero category of the Engineering Matters Awards. In this episode, we learn about the challenges facing SMEs as they try to enter the complex and highly regulated roadbuilding sector. We hear how the programme was designed to bring together SMEs, established contractors, and roadbuilding experts, helping scale sustainable innovations, in a way that is ripe for emulation by other major clients.

Entry for the 2026 Engineering Matters Awards is now open.

Guests

Melissa Giusti, Principal Innovation Advisor, National Highways

Ben Gibbons, CEO, Circular11 

The post #329 Scaling Low Carbon Innovation – Engineering Matters Awards’ winners episode first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Worldwide, water is in short supply and high demand, with very real consequences for human health and security. Many countries struggle to maintain aging networks, meaning that more than 20% of clean water is lost before it reaches the customer. New industries, like data centres, are adding to demand, as they use water for cooling.

In this episode, we look at the work of FIDO Tech, which is using AI and acoustics to identify leaks. The idea of listening for leaks is not new. Traditionally, water company engineers would use a steel rod with an ear cup to listen to water flowing through a pipe. But this is a skilled job, which takes time and staff resources to perform.

FIDO first developed its process as part of an innovation accelerator backed by United Utilities. Bringing the product to market demanded careful thought about physical sensor design, and rigorous training of their AI. In a four week trial with Thames Water, their system was able to work through 45,000 historic recordings, and identify leaks with more than 90% accuracy. Now, the company is developing their system to allow for real time detection of leaks, across water networks.

Guests

Victoria Edwards, CEO/Founder, FIDO Tech

Paul Parr, Global Technical Director, FIDO Tech

The post #328 Listening for Leaks – Engineering Matters Awards Innovation Champion, FIDO first appeared on Engineering Matters.

On the coast of rural Cumbria, in England’s northeast, a once-secretive nuclear site is transforming its legacy by investing in the engineers of tomorrow. Sellafield, known historically for producing weapons-grade plutonium and nuclear energy, has now begun the 100 year process of decommissioning. At the Sellafield Engineering & Maintenance Centre of Excellence, engineers research and develop new technologies for the nuclear industry and engage with the local community. 

As the 2025 Community Gold winners at the Engineering Matters Awards, the team at Sellafield has been recognised for their exceptional outreach to local schools, students, and SEND communities, using engineering to inspire and empower the next generation. In this episode, we explore their work,

Claire O’Connor, the social impact and community lead and Angela Broggins, work experience lead from the Centre of Excellence, along with Jo Hedley from Branthwaite Academy, explain how their unique, inclusive programmes give students not only technical skills but also the confidence to envision futures in STEM. Whether it’s hands-on robotics with primary pupils, bespoke work experience for neurodiverse students, or creating pathways into apprenticeships and employment, this team is reshaping what access to engineering education can look like.

Listeners will learn how the Sellafield Centre of Excellence has shifted the narrative around nuclear engineering, from secrecy to openness, from decommissioning to development. We uncover how strategic, long-term community engagement can spark real change, and how tailored learning has already helped hundreds of young people find their place in the engineering world.

The post #327 Nuclear Engineering for School Children – Engineering Matters Awards 2025 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The past months have seen a shift in international trade, of a scale not seen for decades. New US tariffs have created uncertainty for investors, and promise to spark a global trade war. While these new challenges to cross-border trade are unique, recent years have seen another shift in industrial policy, particularly in the UK, with leaders on both sides of the political divide emphasising a pro-growth, abundance agenda.

With such pressures on existing supply chains, and renewed attention to growth and productivity, can manufacturers still aim for decarbonisation? In this episode, first aired in March 2023, we present an idea that promises to boost growth, while meeting climate goals and protecting local supply chains. 

Sam Turner, Net Zero champion for the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult, proposes a new approach: not offshoring, but ‘greenshoring’. The strategy would see countries competing not just on their ability to supply cheap labour and materials, but on their ability to reduce carbon emissions and other environmental harms.

It’s an approach that has been adopted by Frog Bikes, a manufacturer based in the UK’s Bike Valley, a regional cluster of businesses that aims to develop bicycle manufacturing in the country. 

But the company has struggled to find the data it needs to prove its ability to compete in terms of carbon costs. Doing this will require the development of new carbon accounting tools, and of standards that allow them to be validated. 

Guests

Katherine Bennett, CEO, High Value Manufacturing Catapult

Sam Turner, Net Zero champion, High Value Manufacturing Catapult

Russ Hall, chief engineer, Net Zero, High Value Manufacturing Catapult 

Shelley Lawson, director, Frog Bikes

Jerry Lawson, chief frog, Frog Bikes

The post #326 Revisited: The Green, Green, Shores of Home first appeared on Engineering Matters.

The rise of AI and machine learning promises a revolution in how we live and work. Expert reasoning and mundane tasks will be completed for us in the cloud. But the cloud is not ethereal or abstract. It is a globe spanning mass of physical infrastructure. Enabling this transformation will demand a huge expansion in data centre construction.

Data centres house the processing and computing power that the world relies on. Invested have pledged trillions for their construction. But their costs are environmental, as well as financial. From energy, to water, to materials, data centres require a lot of resources to build and operate. By 2030 the IEA (International Energy Agency) estimates that worldwide data centres will consume 1,000 terrawatt hours of electricity. Today an average data centre uses 300,000 litres of water a day. 

However sustainability in the industry is improving. In this episode, Josh Parker, head of sustainability for Nvidia, explains how improvements in chip design and accelerated computing have led to massive gains in efficiency over the last ten years, doing the same AI workload uses 100,000x less power. Sustainability gains go beyond operational energy use. As Professor Deborah Andrews highlights, e-waste and water usage are key issues the industry must address. And, as Damien Dumestier explains, the scale of this new sector will, perhaps, push innovation all the way into space.

In this episode we explore what the industry is doing to become more sustainable, from improving energy efficiency, building data centres in novel and remote locations and by using AI itself to improve sustainability across industries.

Guests

Professor Deborah Andrews, professor of Design for Sustainability and Circularity, London South Bank University

Josh Parker, head of sustainability, Nvidia

Damien Dumestier, head of the ASCEND feasibility study, Thales Alenia Space

Resources 

IEA 2025 Energy and AI report

The post #325 Data Centre Sustainability first appeared on Engineering Matters.