News & notes
Notes from the yard
Short pieces. No thought-leadership. Occasionally a joke that has earned its keep.
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22 Aug 2026
Work packages are not vibes
If you cannot write the deliverable, you do not yet have a collaboration. You have a lunch.
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14 Aug 2026
The shed is a serious place
Some of the country's best engineering still happens in buildings that would worry a brand consultant.
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5 Aug 2026
Measurement before metaphor
Quantum, AI and net zero all suffer the same illness: language that arrived before the number.
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28 Jul 2026
The box and the job
Search puts research, kit and people in one box. That is the start. Someone still has to say what the work is.
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18 Jul 2026
Weather windows and other moral documents
Marine energy, rail possessions and clinical slots all teach the same lesson: the calendar is part of the engineering.
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28 Aug 2026
The negative result is the product
The most valuable thing several of our packages will produce is a well-evidenced no. Publishers should say so out loud.
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18 Aug 2026
The connection is the project
A great many decarbonisation schemes are now limited not by technology but by a queue. This changes what good engineering looks like.
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8 Aug 2026
On being the second party to a collaboration
Several of our collaborations want a competitor to join. This is less unlikely than it sounds, and the terms are the reason.
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8 Jul 2026
A note on tone
We are told the writing on this site is unusual for the sector. It is deliberate, and it is not decoration.