Bringing Projects to Life

2022 started with so many optimisms ranging from expectations of the pandemic to gradually fade away to predictions that the state of the global economy will pick up as well as the readiness of people to take actions to halt extreme weather events caused by global warming, amongst others. The Real Projects team embraced the new year with positivity and an interesting line-up of events for the year.

Multidiscipline - The ladder to “sky is the limit” by Krishnan Nambiar (Founder & CEO of Vanora Robots) - was the first webinar of the year. The ability to distinguish between talent and skill, think from the talent side, and execute with the skill side were all highlighted as necessities to make one’s self more valuable in the job market today. For February, a webinar on ‘‘The Energy Trilemma’’ was delivered by Thaddeus Anim Somuah, a board member of AFBE and Engineering Manager Projects at Croda. Attendees learned how to balance the trilemma dimensions - Energy Security, Energy Equity and Environmental Sustainability. A comparison was also made between Africa and Europe Trilemma Balance. With the UK’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reach the target of net zero by 2050, an interesting topic to contribute to existing knowledge in achieving this goal - Advancing Geothermal Energy - by Karl Farrow (CEO CeraPhi Energy Limited) ended the first quarter. Different Geothermal approaches including the relatively new CeraPhiWell (Monobore) were discussed.

The second quarter started with a session on ‘‘Connecting Renewable Energy to Communities’’ by Andrew Smith, Operations Director at Balfour Beatty. The increasing need to transmit electricity over large distances between renewable sources and population centres was highlighted. In May, the focus was on Scotland. The role of the transmission network in the north of Scotland in relation to the UK’s net zero journey was discussed by Imran Mohammad from SSE Thermal. Today the world emits around 40 GT of CO2 yearly which contributes to global warming. Kareem Shafi from Offshore Energy UK (OEUK) delivered an in-depth overview of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) - a technology identified by IPCC and IEA as key to achieving the Paris Agreement – to end the first half of the year.

With low-carbon hydrogen identified as key to the UK’s net zero plans, the third quarter kicked off with a topical debate titled “Are we overselling hydrogen in the UK?” by chemical engineering consultant Tom Baxter. It was shown that hydrogen was being oversold in many applications. In August, the role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in de-manning industrial assets, increasing accuracy, lowering cost and emissions was discussed when Jeff Hailey, Product and Development Manager at EServ International gave a presentation on ‘‘The Here & Now Use Case for Digital Twin Technology in Energy Industries and What it means in the future”.

The third quarter ended with Real Projects first hybrid event since the pandemic. The event titled “Legal Principles to prevent another Grenfell Disaster: Implications for Emerging Technologies” started with a networking session which provided a great opportunity to interact with seasoned professionals in the energy industry. Dr Eddy Wifa and Professor John Paterson from the University of Aberdeen examined the suitability of the regulatory design for ensuring safe construction, operation, and maintenance and decommissioning of emerging offshore energy technologies.

Our England team held two Real Projects events thanks to our wonderful Corporate Partners - Pall and DePuy Synthes. At the first Real Projects webinar, the speaker Dr. Hiromi Gonzalez Fuentes, a Field Application Scientist at Pall, provided us with insights into Real time PCR testing and its importance in the Food and Beverage Industry.

Robert Morris - Sterility Assurance Scientist and NazirAhmed Karbanee - Bioengineer, Hips Product Development from DePuy Synthes spoke about The Product Development Lifecycle of Joints during the second Real Projects webinar hosted by the England team. The talk included a detailed walk through of the development of an orthopaedic implant and explored a product from a clinical/user-needs analysis, through design, testing and into deployment.

Both webinars were educational and fun with lots of engagement from attendees.

Real Project event remained topical through the last quarter of 2022 with our October event covering “Aspects of Transition: Engineering a new Energy future’’. Matthew Neal took the audience on the journey to lower carbon, affordable UK energy supply, covering aspects of the North Sea Transition Deal whilst offering an upstream industry perspective about the opportunities, and challenges. Rounding off our packed programme of events for the year was a presentation on ‘‘Why should I care about psychological safety?” by Sope Agbelusi, Executive coach of Mindsetshift, looking at why it is important to create a psychologically safe environment beyond diversity and inclusion, its impact both at home and work. Sope left our audience with valuable tips on how to create an environment that fosters psychological safety.

Article by Toyin Fatokun and Chi Felly-Njoku

Toyin Fatokun is an environmental and sustainability professional with a master’s degree with Distinction in Energy and Environmental Technology and Economics from City University London. Toyin currently works as a Sustainability Officer with Aberdeen City Council where provides advise on environmental and substantiality issues and helps the organisation translate their sustainability goals into actionable and measurable programmes to enable it transition to a low carbon economy. Toyin is passionate about the environment with a focus on how we can drive sustainability through behavioural change. In her spare time, Toyin is involved in coaching in the workplace and volunteers as a Mental Health First aider.