Engineering

Engineering is where abstract ideas meet physical constraints. Most of this section is about civil engineering: infrastructure, water, soil, structures, transport and the models used to understand how those systems behave. I’m especially interested in the route from a physical problem to a design.

Before there is a number, someone has already decided what matters, what can be ignored and how much of the real system the model needs to capture. That is the part I find interesting. A model doesn’t need all of reality. It needs the right parts for the question being asked. I want those assumptions to stay visible enough that the answer can be understood, checked and used sensibly.

Mathematics and computing are never very far away. Mathematics gives the analysis a language. Computing makes larger models and purpose-built tools practical. Clear technical writing belongs there too. A clever result isn’t much use if nobody else can follow how you reached it.

Some of the work here will look like conventional civil engineering. Some will look suspiciously like software. The useful bit is often the handover between the two.