Engineering: The Perfect Retirement Job?

I was interested to read a piece in Infrastructure Intelligence this week which suggested that the engineering industry is losing out on the experience of older people by failing to support them in later life. This surprised me, because that hasn't been my experience at all. 
I'm thinking of several people for whom engineering has proved the ideal retirement job, provided that companies allow them to focus on doing what they do best: great technical work and passing on their expertise to the next generation. After all, who would willingly give up a job as endlessly fascinating and useful as bridges and railways, roads and flood defences?

Walls in the Willows - a renewable construction material

This week I was fascinated by a lunchtime talk about a renewable construction material that grows itself: retaining walls made from willow! This has been used in several locations in Norfolk either on its own (for footpaths or river banks which aren't particularly sensitive to settlement) or to provide living scour protection for gabion basket walls (for roads or rail applications).

Willow spiling wall comprises posts and withy infill.
Image from JPR Environmental

What is willow spiling?
A willow spiling wall consists of two elements:

• Live timber posts measuring at least 100mm in diameter (being a natural material, the size will vary somewhat) which are installed at 0.6 to 1.0m centres like a king post wall. 
• Willow "withies" are woven between the posts to form the infill panels (as this is a fairly open weave, a layer of Terram is advised on the landward side of the wall to prevent loss of fines). Backfill to the retaining wall should comprise silt, sand or gravel.

Sitting Down for a Fairtrade Breakfast in York

"Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world" (Martin Luther King)

Perhaps this morning you relied on farmers in India for your tea, Colombia for your bananas, cocoa from Cote D'Ivoire, sugar from Malawi or coffee from Ethiopia. So since we rely on so many people just to produce our breakfast, how come the people who grow the food we take for granted can’t always feed their own families? This question lies at the heart of this year's Fairtrade Fortnight, which we kicked off in style in Yorkshire by hosting a Fairtrade Breakfast in front of York Minster. This is probably the only time I'm likely to eat breakfast outdoors in my pyjamas with the Lord Mayor of York in her dressing gown! The passing tourists loved it, unsurprisingly...

Breakfast with Lord Mayor of York, Sonja Crisp, in her dressing gown, complete with mayoral chains (she refused to be drawn on whether she actually goes to bed in these!)

The Perfect Storm? Climate Change, Flooding and Resilience

Following the flooding across Yorkshire over Christmas, this week I'm speaking at a panel debate in York entitled "A Perfect Storm: Climate Change, Cuts and Floods", bringing a civil engineering perspective to a national (and international) problem. Come and join us at 7.30pm on Thursday 18th Feb, Quaker Meeting House, Friargate. 
So how can I summarise in a ten minute opening speech (alongside contributions from a climate expert, a flooded resident and a firefighter) what are the most important things we need to do to become more resilient to flooding, and are we doing them? Well, as I've written in my earlier posts, to consider a problem holistically I like to start from first principles. So here is the flooding problem as we face it in the UK: 

1) Rain falls out of the sky (and more rain is coming)
We live on an island next to the Atlantic Ocean, which is warming up as a result of climate change. The prevailing wind blows warm wet air over the UK, depositing its moisture as it goes (especially on the west side of the Pennines - sorry Cumbria!). My gut feeling in December was that something was seriously wrong with the weather and our infrastructure was likely to suffer the consequences. The Met Office confirmed this as the average temperature over the month of December was 8.0 degrees, a whopping 4.1 degrees higher than the long term average of 4 degrees and much larger than the previous record (6.9 degrees in 1934). 
Warm winters usually mean wet and windy ones, as storms blow in off the sea and this winter has been unusual, but not unexpected given what we know about climate impacts. Therefore, while we cannot control the weather itself, we do have a choice about limiting our carbon emissions now to prevent making it worse. 

ICE Triennial 2: Why Engineering Change Needs All of Us to Get Involved

This morning, an opinion piece about the value of learning by heart got me thinking. Does the ubiquitous  availability of sat-navs mean that the Knowledge, the detailed memorisation of routes through Central London required to become a London taxi driver, is no longer necessary? Or is there value in spending several years and discipline to get by hard work what any visitor can get off their smart phone? 

You could ask a similar question about engineering practice. A trend in the rail industry, where a quarter of experienced rail engineers are expected to retire in the next ten years, is to meet the shortage of skilled resources with project managers and new software to automate planning processes as much as possible. The ICE have been asking what the role of engineers will be in the future, in an age of Building Information Modelling (BIM), driverless cars and other technologies such a 3D printing or off-site fabrication. When people can look up anything that interests them on the internet, do we still need textbooks and engineering courses? 

ICE Triennial #1: On Desmond and Destruction

It was a dark and stormy night...

So I began my blog two years ago in December 2013 telling my engineer's tales of how climate change is affecting UK infrastructure through storms, floods and landslides. This week, as the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris have worked through many stormy nights (literal and metaphorical) to try and hammer out a deal, the ICE hosted the Triennial Summit with the American and Canadian societies of civil engineers, a conference about resilience, climate and meeting the infrastructure needs of the future for cities around the world.

A review of 2013/14
2013/14 was a bad winter for the railways, as I wrote about in more detail a few months later in March 2014, when it had been confirmed as the wettest three month period in UK history in some places. The railway at Dawlish was wrecked by ferocious waves caused by the St Jude storm's high winds, cutting off rail access to Cornwall and it was only reopened in time for Easter.
There were over 100 landslides on the rail network, including several places like the Hastings line where multiple incidents happened on the same line. A presentation by a rail engineer for Kent at the Yorkshire Geotechnical Group in May told a sorry tale of fighting the elements to get the lines reopened again, but in some cases it took many weeks because it was impossible to get materials in or out by rail where the line was blocked in both directions.

Inspiration and Ideas: Transport Books

Looking for more book reviews or reading suggestions? Follow posts tagged "Inspiration and Ideas"...
Being a rail engineer, I read plenty of books about transport (as previously noted, these are not usually the ones featuring steam trains!) So here are my current favourites:

1) Planning Sustainable Transport, Barry Hutton (Routledge, 2014)
This is currently my favourite book about transport, because it really opened my mind to concepts that make a great deal of sense but are rarely discussed. For example, consider the space budget, beautifully illustrated by this sequence of images showing how much space 200 people take up in 170 cars, two buses, on foot or bike or on a tram. Or, consider how transport planning usually assumes that people have a fixed start and end point and a choice of the way in which you get there. This isn't actually true, for example out-of-town shopping centres which assume you travel by car: people avoid congestion in central York by changing their destination as well! So land use is intimately linked to transport options, but are usually considered completely separately.

Energy and Transport: How the Railways Moved From Freight to Passengers

When the railways were first built, they were conceived as a method of carrying goods efficiently from one place to another, and passengers were something of an afterthought. The opposite is now true: most people think first of passenger trains and freight has often seemed the "poor relation" (for example, freight-only routes are usually designated "secondary" with a lower standard of maintenance and investment than high speed passenger routes such as the East Coast Mainline). 

While freight continues to be a vital part of the rail network (and estimated to grow by 30% over the next 5 years), what and how materials are transported are a world away from the original design. This can be illustrated by the small goods depot at Poppleton station, which I photographed on my way home. Under the original model, railways were statutorily required to accept any and all goods at all stations to any destination, whether a crate of chickens or milk churns going to market or coal to factories, homes or local "town gas" plants/power stations. 

All that changed when energy started being supplied differently: rather than having a power station for every town, we now distribute electricity via pylons and the National Grid from a few large power stations miles away.

Rail electrification at last for the North?

I have previously written about the Harrogate Line and thesignificant barriers which it presents to people who want to travel between Leeds, Harrogate and York without resorting to a car, and about the difficulties that short-term thinking has presented to our efforts to improve the line (not least bridges which are not wide enough or high enough). So it’s time for some good news, and over the last few weeks there has been a flurry of it!

 

Firstly, engagement with bidders for the various franchises has resulted in a promise by Virgin East Coast to provide a two-hourly direct service from Harrogate to London and back (7 trains per day in each direction) which is a vast improvement on the current situation where there is only one early morning train to London and one late evening train back again.   

The circular economy and sustainable concrete

Do engineers need to significantly change how we use materials to make what we build sustainable? I've been thinking recently about this question in the context of concrete, one of the most frequently used materials in construction. In this post I'll be exploring the two main problems with concrete: that it is extremely energy-intensive to manufacture, and it is difficult to re-use without downgrading the quality.

For example, industry statistics show that last year the UK construction industry used 15 million cubic metres (37.5 million tonnes) of ready-mix concrete and 25 million tonnes of concrete products from blocks and pre-cast walls to driven piles.  

Castleton cement works in Derbyshire
(picture by Dave Pape)

Concrete is formed from two materials: cement and aggregate. Quarrying is required for both elements (with attendant environmental and landscape impacts), but the cement also requires a chemical reaction to occur: calcium carbonate (ie limestone) is heated to a high temperature (300 degrees C) to drive off CO2 and form calcium oxide instead. Therefore making cement produces CO2 both from the fuel used for heating and from the reaction itself (although this can be somewhat recovered when used, as hardening cement absorbs CO2 to form calcium carbonate again). 

Life in Community - Reflections from LILAC

This is my second post inspired by a visit to LILAC, an innovative co-housing project in Leeds built in 2013 using straw bale and timber construction. Lilac is an acronym that reflects the initiative's three core values: Low impact living (covered in my previous post),  affordable, community. I'll be writing more about the thorny issues of affordability and housing after attending a workshop hosted by Green Christian on the subject on 24th Jan.

When I try explaining Lilac to others, people usually can't imagine what I'm talking about. Eco-housing, certainly, but living in community?

Thinking Long Term: Learning from the Railways

This post is part of a series inspired by the book "Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice" (see the introduction to the series here). Having examined the issue of intergenerational stewardship and thinking long term about infrastructure (Principle 3) in my last post, how can we put this knowledge into practice in real civil engineering situations such as the railways?

Putting it into Practice 3.1: Plan for the Long Term

There is a need for future proofing, but all our predictions are scenarios: we need a clear statement for each line of what it would ideally look like in 20 years time, such that all projects work together to either facilitate the vision, or at the very least not get in the way. For example, the Harrogate Line was reduced from two tracks to one between Poppleton and Hammerton in the early 1970s, which means that it is now only possible to run one train per hour between York and Harrogate and any delays quickly escalate because the train in one direction can't pass a train which is running late in the other direction, so only 85% of trains run on time. 

Thinking Long Term: Why "Doing it for the kids" is not good enough

Principle 3: Intergenerational Stewardship (or Thinking Long Term)

This post examines the concept of intergenerational stewardship, the 3rd principle of sustainable infrastructure (see the introduction to this series inspired by the book “Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice”).

We don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children (Anon)

The concept of protecting the earth for our children has been one of the key ways that people have understood the environmental movement over the last 30 years. It has been posited that as a direct appeal to people's emotions, this is a strong motivation for people to act. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't seem to support this view.

What is Infrastructure For? Social and Economic Sustainability Goals

Principle 2: Social and economic development

‘If you’re asking me to choose between conservation and development, I’m going to choose development every time.' Community worker in Democratic Republic of Congo

This is part of a series inspired by the book Sustainable Infrastructure. What is infrastructure for? And do we really have to make a choice between meeting people's needs and protecting the environment, as the quote above suggests? 

The purpose of most infrastructure is to improve social or economic outcomes (and let's face it, when one third of the world's people have no access to sanitation, there's no shortage of need) and that's why economic issues have traditionally been the biggest influence over project scoping and delivery.

For example, many projects are justified on the basis of a cost-benefit ratio, which may consider only benefits within the organisation (eg reduced maintenance and operation costs for a railway) or may additional calculate the wider economic benefits to users (eg the business case for HS2).

Putting it into practice 1: How do we live within our limits?

This post is part of a series inspired by the book "Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice" (see the introduction to the series here). Having examined the issue of planetary boundaries (Principle 1) in my last post, how can we put this knowledge into practice in real civil engineering situations? 

Two "operational" rules of thumb are proposed to ensure that all our buildings, transport etc protect rather than damage our planet's capacity to support life:

1.1: Set targets and measure against environmental limits
"If you can measure it, you can manage it"

Living within our limits: Exploring Planetary Boundaries

Sustainable Infrastructure - Principle 1. Environmental Sustainability - Living Within Our Planet's Limits 

This post explores the concept of planetary boundaries, the first principle of sustainable infrastructure (see the introduction to this series inspired by the book “Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice”).

Environmental Capacity:   

Sustainable development has often been described as the "triple bottom line" of financial (or economic), social and environmental impacts, with a lovely Venn diagram showing these three ideas working in harmony. However, this doesn't reflect the relative importance of the three elements: cost or economic benefits are usually considered to be the main driver for development, but there's little point having lots of money if the result is destroying the capacity of our one and only planet to support life! 

Sustainable Infrastructure 1: Understanding the Problem

This is the first in a series of posts inspired by the book “Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice”, written by Charles Ainger and Richard Fenner from the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Cambridge University Engineering Department. My fourth year MEng project involved conducting research to develop improved ceramic water filters for use in developing countries working with the Centre for Sustainable Development, so I feel a personal connection with the authors as well as the subject matter.

The question I want to address is this: how do we get the step change in the infrastructure we need to  build and maintain to avoid locking ourselves into high-carbon, environmentally damaging solutions for the next 50 years?