Massive Engineering Mistakes
6 July
Tuesdays 19h25
Humans have been building for more than 10,000 years – we’re engineering experts and yet every year, tales emerge of construction calamities from all over the world. From the extraordinary to the ridiculous, this series uncovers the epic fails and near misses engineers would rather not talk about. A skyscraper with a killer secret, a crumbling cathedral and a bridge with a balance problem all make the hitlist of barely believable building blunders… and let’s not forget the original engineering fail, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. With access to design teams, eye witnesses and a panel of experts, we analyse what went wrong with each building blunder,
investigate why they went undetected and reveal the lengths engineers go to trying to fix them.
Disasters Engineered
6 July
Tuesdays 20h15
Scientists study the world as it is, politicians debate the world
they want, but engineers create the world that has never been.
Industrialisation, water distribution, electrification, automation
and communication are all engineered revolutions that have
transformed our world and changed every detail of our lives.
However, for every future built, there are man-made mistakes
that cause catastrophic disasters. Icarus-like moments when our
overreaching, greed and desire to conquer the impossible don’t
just cost reputations, but millions of dollars, environmental damage
and lives. Chernobyl, Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, the Titanic,
Challenger and the Hindenburg are names not remembered
for the great feats of engineering they initially were, but for the
horrors that they became. Through extensive archive and expert
interviews this series explores the stories behind mankind’s greatest
engineering disasters. How and why they happened and what we
have learnt from them. Disasters teach us more than successes,
every set back offers an opportunity to move forward and innovate,
because the greatest tragedy would be to never try at all.
Assembly Required
12 July
Mondays 19h25
Tim Allen and Richard Karn, the hosts from Tool Time, the handyman show within the show Home Improvement, are finishing the mission they started years ago. The two are inviting builders and repair experts with the how-to spirit – and the determination to restore rather than replace – into their hardware arena. The arena dominated by never-ending aisles filled with massive shelves of supplies is the perfect proving grounds for Tim and Richard to test the ingenuity and ability of the competitors to return items to their original state and then make them bigger, louder and more powerful. Each episode, finds the duo diving into the unique history around these items to celebrate the men and women who crafted them, and
the techniques used.
