Engineering Matters

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, and more on using connected data to solve real world problems. 

Velia Janetzky is project lead for the industrial metaverse at Siemens Electronics Factory Erlangen. Here, her team has been developing processes that marry the real and the virtual, to achieve ambitious efficiency and sustainability goals. Rather than relying on resource intensive physical methods to train robots, for example, they can now use virtual environments for the same training, cutting implementation times for automation projects.

In this episode, Velia is joined by Jon Heidorn, head of analyst relations at Siemens, and Ryan Martin, research director at ABI Research, to explain the innovations being made at the cutting edge of the industrial metaverse. We learn how factory owners can develop their own industrial metaverse strategy, by focusing on productivity gains in the real world. We discover how entire supply chains will soon be viewable through a ‘single pane of glass’, allowing improvements to be made within factories, and informed by data collected from suppliers and customers.

Guests

Velia Janetzky, project lead Industrial Metaverse, Siemens Electronics Factory Erlangen

Ryan Martin, senior research director, digital transformation and AI, ABI Research 

Jon Heidorn, VP, analyst relations, Siemens Digital Industries

Partner

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, realisation and optimisation 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 #342 Real Solutions and the Industrial Metaverse first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Alan Lusty founded adi Group, a multidisciplinary engineering business supporting major manufacturers. He is now COO 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 as a target by The 5% Club apprenticeship advocacy scheme. As a Platinum member of the scheme, adi Group has a clear track record of supporting apprentices. In 2018, prime minister Theresa May and chancellor Philip Hammond visited adi Group and met some of the apprentices. In the Commons, May noted that this demonstrated the opportunities offered by apprenticeships.

But despite these successes, recruiting apprentices was a challenge. Alan’s solution was to establish a pre-apprenticeship scheme, targeting 13- and 14-year olds. As part of the scheme, children would be brought into adi each week, and introduced to engineering.

After COVID, the scheme was taken up by the King’s Norton Boys’ School. At the school, deputy headmaster Jonathan Butcher took the lead in organising entry to the scheme. He explains that it has opened up new choices and career path ways for pupils. It has also opened the eyes of parents and teachers to the real world of engineering, showing that this is a sector with real opportunities, that inspires young people’s problem solving skills.

Guests

Alan Lusty, founder/COO, adi Group

Jon Butcher, deputy head, King’s Norton School for Boys

The post #341 Opening the Door to Engineering – Engineering Matters Awards winner’s episode first appeared on Engineering Matters.

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 is more, it is employing this battery technology onto a new state of the art machine that goes deeper than ever before to get more data about the ground beneath our feet.

This journey of innovation is not one that it has undertaken alone. Working in partnership with Dutch heavy lifting specialist Mammoet, the project benefitted from Dutch government investment to support their investigation into electrification of the CPT equipment. In this episode, we explore this new product and look ahead to how remote operations and innovations in battery technology could be incorporated in future machines.

Guests

Niek Bezuijen, global sustainability advisor, Mammoet 

Femke De Jager, innovation director, Europe, Fugro

Peter Salome, engineering manager, Fugro

David Tindall, product manager for geotechnical equipment land, Fugro

References

NEN 9140 Veilig werken aan e-voertuige (Safe working on e-vehicles)

Innovation realised with Schoon en Emissieloos Bouwmaterieel (SSEB) subsidy provided by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management

Engineering Matters 276: A deep understanding of the ground beneath our feet

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 #340 Diving Deep into Electric Machinery first appeared on Engineering Matters.

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 Teesside in England’s north east, are inherently complex. Every change will cause ripples throughout the supply chain, and potentially impact schedules and costs. But this, AtkinsRéalis’s Kelly Burdall argues, isn’t the root cause of the problem. Instead, she explains, we should look at the contract structures used on major projects.

Traditionally, each party to a contract—designers, lead contractors, other members of the supply chain—are paid on a time and materials basis. That means that every time a clash creates more work, or a change requires more materials, the parties are paid more. This disincentivises collaboration, and can be seen as rewarding failure and discouraging investment in more efficient ways of working.

A new type of contract encourages collaboration and innovation. Integrated contracts, like those developed under National Highways delivery integrated partnership model, set goals based on outcomes: all parties to the contract are rewarded for delivering on time, without defects, and within budget. This aligns incentives, encourages investment in innovation, and can even be adopted before a project is tendered.

Guests

Joe Chastney, head of digital transformation, Balfour Beatty

Scott Shaw, client director, AtkinsRéalis

James Butler, managing director of project & programme services (PPS), AtkinsRéalis

Kelly Burdall, Programme Lead, Consulting, Strategy and Advisory, AtkinsRéalis

References

ISO 44001 Collaborative business relationship management systems 

Project13 An enterprise model for infrastructure delivery

NUAR UK National Underground Asset Register

UK National Infrastructure Pipeline

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 #339 Integrated Contracts and Innovative Delivery first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Nature has long served as a blueprint for engineering breakthroughs from the kingfisher-inspired design of Japan’s Bullet Train to termite mounds that inform energy-efficient buildings. Siemens Digital Industries is taking this concept further by combining biomimicry with digital technology to tackle sustainability challenges across entire industries. Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability at Siemens, explains how looking beyond individual components to view entire systems can reveal powerful opportunities to reduce waste, optimise processes, and rethink how we measure success.

One powerful example is Ekonoke, a company growing hops in fully controlled indoor environments. With Siemens’ support, Ekonoke scaled their production by using digital tools to simulate and refine every element of their process before building physical systems. By designing their operations to be co-located with breweries, they’re able to recycle CO₂ and wastewater, turning industrial by-products into valuable resources. Their approach demonstrates how digitalisation, circular design, and proximity-based supply chains can dramatically lower environmental footprints while improving reliability and yield.

Finland-based Spinnova shows similar potential in the textile sector, producing sustainable fibre from wood pulp and agricultural waste without harmful chemicals. Inspired by spider silk and supported by Siemens, Spinnova used digital twins to perfect both product design and factory layout. Their commitment to full traceability and renewable energy sets a high bar for transparency in manufacturing. Both Ekonoke and Spinnova prove that when companies think holistically across the full lifecycle and supply chain sustainability becomes not just an add-on, but a foundation for smarter, more resilient business.

Guests

Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability, Siemens Digital Industries

Ines Sagrario, CEO and Co-founder, Ekonoke

Juha Salmena, CTO and Co-founder, Spinnova

The post #338 Bio-Inspired Innovation & Systemic Sustainability first appeared on Engineering Matters.

In this episode, we spotlight the remarkable work of the Lightyear Foundation, the winner of the Engineering Matters Awards 2025 Gold Champion for Diversity and Inclusion. The foundation is the only UK charity dedicated to engaging disabled and neurodivergent young people with STEM.

Chief Executive Jeff Banks and Senior Programme Manager Emma Zeale explain how the charity uses immersive sensory science, STEM workplace trips, and specially designed Lightyear Labs to ignite curiosity and boost confidence in children who are often excluded from traditional STEM education. With 75% of their staff and trustees identifying as disabled or neurodivergent, Lightyear leads by example and is working to ensure all young people see a place for themselves in STEM.

We also hear from Hannah Ford Tomlinson, who developed the Engineering Lightyear Lab. Drawing on her background in science communication and personal experience as an autistic person, she shares how each lab session is tailored for accessibility. The labs promote agency and exploration, allowing students to take control of their learning. A standout moment includes an impromptu adaptation when wet play-doh caused sensory issues for some students, highlighting the importance of flexibility and co-creation in the classroom.

Lightyear’s impact doesn’t stop at the lab door. Through initiatives like the F1 Engineering Project, youth forums, and even plans for apprentice trusteeships, the foundation is building pathways into the broader STEM ecosystem. Students are not only learning and experimenting, but shaping how STEM outreach is designed and delivered. By listening to young people’s voices and ensuring they have authentic leadership roles, Lightyear Foundation is creating a future where disability is not a barrier to participation, but a vital perspective in the world of science and engineering.

Guests

Jeff Banks, Chief Executive, Lightyear Foundation

Emma Zeale, Senior Programme Manager, Lightyear Foundation

Hannah Ford Tomlinson, Communities and Partnerships Program Manager, Lightyear Foundation

Links

Lightyear Foundation

The post #337 Breaking Barriers to STEM with Lightyear Foundation – Engineering Matters Awards winners episode first appeared on Engineering Matters.

At a quarry in Turkey, heavy haul trucks are carrying hundreds of tonnes of materials, with no external power. It’s not quite perpetual motion, but it is removing the need for diesel or cables on a hard working site.

NUH Cement commissioned ABB to repower a 30-year-old Euclid haul truck. The truck collects loads from a hill top quarry, carries them downhill, and then returns uphill empty. That gave the team at ABB an idea: rather than losing the gravity energy of the load to braking, why not capture it and use it to power the truck back uphill?

The job took careful modelling, to ensure the trucks could be relied on, whatever the circumstances on site. With the batteries being constantly charged and discharged, the impact of this on their lifespan and health also had to be considered.

The scope of this work is far wider than might be expected. There are more than 70,000 trucks like this worldwide, and many are working in similar conditions. And the approach ABB took to the project, of careful study of a client’s site condition, offers a method for decarbonising across industry, one win at a time.

Guests

Thomas Huggenberger, Head of Technical Project Management, ABB

Ece Akyalçın Turhan, Service and Project Manager, ABB Traction

Fabiana Cavalcante, Global Head of Mobile E-Power, ABB

The post #336 Gravity-Powered Heavy Haul – Engineering Matters Awards winners episode first appeared on Engineering Matters.

LongPath Technologies has taken Nobel-winning discoveries, and applied them to a key cause of climate change: methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. The sector now turns to LongPath to establish monitoring across facilities. But as LongPath sought to scale from innovation to commercialization, it turned to Red Pitaya for a vital component.

In this episode we tell the story of LongPath, and how their laser-based methane monitoring has been developed over the past decade. We learn how this work was enabled by a cheap and highly configurable processing board from Red Pitaya. And we discover why Red Pitaya was chosen as a Gold Champion at the Engineering Matters Awards.

This highly configurable board, much like a Raspberry Pi for scientists and engineers, is cheap enough that it can be used by start-ups and school students alike. In an Awards shortlist episode we saw how school students have used it in experiments at CERN. And it is flexible and powerful enough that it can meet the needs of innovators like those at LongPath.

Guests

Črt Valentinčič, co-founder, CTO, Red Pitaya

Robbie Wright, co-founder, Chief Engineer, LongPath Technologies

The post #335 Monitoring Methane: The Tech Behind the Tech  first appeared on Engineering Matters.

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.