The development of the US Interstate Highway System was the largest civil engineering project in the world with a final cost of more than €100 billion. Although a number of limited access, dual carriageway roads were built in the US during the 1920s and 1930s, the genesis for the creation of the Interstates was the end of the Second World War, when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Dwight D Eisenhower saw the German Autobahn system in 1945 which influenced his thoughts towards ...

Vehicle manufacturers are investing billions of euro in new in-vehicle technology and there are predictions that by 2020, autonomous vehicles will be a common sight on the road. In the meantime, many of the features needed for full autonomy are already available. From the perspective of managing the safety of drivers in your organisation, what do you need to know – and what should you be doing? Some years ago, I had a conversation with a fleet manager who was very excited about a deal he ...

[caption id="attachment_39135" align="alignright" width="300"] SGN Robotics team including Colin Osborne, SGN engineering policy manager (second from left), Richard Mason, SGN innovation project manager (third from right) and PJ Rudden (far right)[/caption] A winning project from last year's Engineers Ireland Excellence Awards last year has won big at the UK Business Awards 2017. UK gas network company Scotia Gas Networks (SGN), and its Network Innovation Competition (NIC) Robotics ...

[caption id="attachment_38724" align="alignright" width="300"] CLICK TO ENLARGE Pic 1: View showing rot in timber waybeam removed from UBE16. Note how there is no visual indication on the top surface of this deterioration[/caption] A ‘waybeam’ is the term for a railway sleeper supporting the rails by running longitudinally under the rail. Made from timber, waybeams were once commonplace at bridges in Ireland, where the lightweight rail support assembly kept the cost of bridge construction ...

Everyone is talking about ‘big data’ and how tech behemoths like Google are going to use it to change the world. But what does it mean for the rest of us – companies and organisations who do not have ninja-coders sitting on beanbags developing artificial intelligence apps during their company-subsidised gourmet lunch breaks? In May of this year, The Economist declared that the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. And with some saying that 90% of the world’s data was ...

In the first part of his presidential address, Engineers Ireland president Dr Kieran Feighan outlined how harnessing energy to improve mobility has been the foundation for the development of many of the great empires in the world over the course of history. You can read it here. One of the key areas that we need to explore is energy storage. There are many innovative solutions being put forward, both on a large scale and on a small scale. There is currently a well-advanced project in ...