Sketching For Engineers

Sketching is an amazing thing. It’s a great way of communicating an idea to someone, rapidly discovering solutions and testing a design for buildability. It’s an underrated skill in the engineering toolbox, and one that is sadly finding itself…Read More

3D Printing: An Introduction

In the future everything will be 3D printed. Or so we are led to believe. Like most of the science fiction-esq technologies I grew up with: robots, hoverboards, traffic lights that play music…Read More

Python For Engineers: Part 1

I don’t want to hazard a guess how many times I’ve complained about the terrible misuse of Excel that I often witness atthe hands of over zealous engineers. However, last time I did this someone kindly pointed out that…Read More

Art and Approximation: A Review

“It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong”

Attributed to John Maynard Keynes (an economist), few quotes so accurately reflect my experience in design. Throughout my career I’ve become increasingly technical- I even…Read More

Genetic Algorithms for Engineering

Machine learning is the topic of the hour; so in an attempt to stay relevant I thought I’d join in and share some of my own experience. Genetic algorithms are a ‘learning’ approach that can be used to find…Read More

Mapping the Eurocodes

Have you ever wondered why the Eurocodes are so damn annoying to use? I know I have. On my litany of things I hate about the Eurocodes are the way it always feels like you need to get 25 documents together before…Read More

Engineering On Stack Exchange

It’s here! We finally have an Engineering Stack Exchange! It feels a bit like I’ve been talking about this forever- so it is fantastic to see a community finally form and begin to create something. But now we’ve got it, we…Read More

Engineering Stack Exchange

Around two years ago I wrote a post rhapsodising on the benefits of Stack Exchange, about how it was the best thing in the world and about how Civil Engineers should totally have a presence there. It finished…Read More

Influencing The Next Eurocodes

It’s funny to think that the Eurocodes, which were so cutting-edge when I was at University that I was barely taught about them, actually begun life 12 years before I was born. It’s even…Read More

Maths In The Head

It turns out there is one thing that everyone knows about engineers: We Do Maths. I’ve lost count of the amount of times friends have simply deferred any arthritic to my good-self because “you’re an…Read More