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Most buildings around the world – residential, commercial or industrial – use a lot of energy during their lifetime, whether for lighting, heating, ventilation systems or plugged-in devices. In fact, buildings use about 40% of global energy, 25% of global water, 40% of global resources, and they emit approximately one third of greenhouse gases.

3D volumetric construction is one of the most modern building construction techniques in civil engineering today. It is a form of off-site construction in which units are manufactured in a factory and then transported to site for assembly. The method of constructing within a factory setting ensures that the necessary building materials are brought in just in time and the modules can be constructed irrespective of the weather outside.  The products can be transported to site in various states of finish (modules, basic structural blocks or semi finished) ready for assembly in-situ. The basic idea is that as much of the building is constructed off site (in a factory assembly line) and only brought to site for completion.

Based on all the available evidence, climate change is real and it is happening – the planet is experiencing rising temperatures, melting snow-caps, and increased numbers of floods, droughts, and wildfires. 2019 was the second warmest year ever and 2010-2019 was the warmest decade on the planet – ever. Limiting the global temperature rise to well below 2°C this century is one of the defining challenges from the Paris Agreement.

At first glance, engineering and music may seem worlds apart. But when we look closer, the impact of engineering on the music industry cannot be underestimated. In the second part of a series on “Engineering in Pop Culture”, we look at how engineering has influenced music and what happens when their paths cross. Over the years, engineers have altered how music is created, performed, recorded, stored, transmitted, and heard.

Global water scarcity is a huge problem and one that is not going away soon. In fact, as noted by the United Nations World Water Development Report in 2018, it is an issue that is only going to get bigger, the report stating that nearly 6 billion people will suffer from clean water scarcity by 2050. This shortage is caused by a combination of rising global population (leading to economic development) and a reduction of available water (due to global warming).

It is amazing how often engineering concepts (or engineered products) have been incorporated into popular culture. In this blog, we consider the impact of engineering on popular films and vice-versa.

For many years, around the world, it has been recognised that there is a skills shortage in engineering; that there simply aren’t enough engineers required to complete large-scale investments of local, national and international importance.

Smart or intelligent materials are described as materials that can achieve a controlled, predictable, variation in one or more of their properties as a direct response to an external stimuli and/or a change in their environment. The external changes can be fluctuations in temperature, light, pressure, magnetic or electrical fields, surrounding moisture, or chemicals. Not all smart materials are the same. Some can change their properties due to more than one of the external stimuli at the same time, and some materials offer greater adaptability due to certain external changes than others.

As we collectively learn the lessons from our handling of a global pandemic, there is an increasing awareness of the need to be prepared for the big issues our planet faces through the 2020s. In particular, what can engineers do to combat some of the known challenges that we will face? Here we look at 3 global and interconnected societal challenges and ask what engineers can do to help solve them.