Being Brunel for Four Years
Who would ha- wait haven't I said tha- OK- I've even made that joke before! I've been Being Brunel for four years. The is the 209th time that I've shouted out into the void; filling the internet with whatever occurs to...
Notes From A Civil EngineerBeing Brunel
Engineering Culture
Engineers are so damn practical; give them a problem and they’ll just get on a solve it. The ultimate pragmatists; it’s not too hard to see why it often takes an external force to change the industry. Forever, (it seems), we’ve...
In The Defence of Brutalism
As the joke goes at Universities, the Civil Engineering building is always the ugliest. For the University of Glasgow, this is the Rankine Building. A monstrous slab of brutalist concrete towering out of the...
AEC Hackathon 3.3
For those of you who missed it, there's something fun happening in London this weekend- and I'm going to be there. Yes, it's the AEC Hackathon! To make life a bit more exciting (and to allow me to get all the dull...
Metric Driven Design
Metrics; measurements with purpose. It's a term I'd long left associated with those business managers that trade buzzwords with each other; inheriting, instead, the engineer's standard unit- a deliverable. And...
The End Of A Season
Those of you who are relatively new to Being Brunel would be forgiven for not knowing that this is a blog this is updates weekly. You might not even be overly clear what it's about- sure, it says "notes from a...
Cost and Consequence
About once a month my train to work is delayed. There are signal failures, over running works, unexpected weather; the litany of excuses is endless. Only last week I sat in Waterloo and watched hours of trains get canceled...
Python for Engineers: Part 3
It's about time we did some more Python. Who's excited? In the last couple of posts I've helped you literally get started by setting up a Python environment and then set you down the road of variables and in/output. And we could stop there; it's enough functionality to write pretty much...
The 200th Post
Turns out I've pumped out 200 ill informed opinions into the internet. At 141'176 words Being Brunel had surpassed 20'000 Leagues Under The Sea in length (if not artistic...
A British Engineer’s Apology to Europe
At the moment, I’m mostly embarrassed. Sure, I’ll be angry, then sad; disappointed and finally resigned to picking up the pieces. But mostly I just can’t believe we did it. Yes- for all of you out there who don’t know; it...