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FM Finnegan Consulting Engineers is a chartered structural engineering design firm. Read our blog for musings and industry insights.

Motorists who regularly travel the length and breadth of the country on our otherwise excellent motorway network will be familiar with the workings of a controversial traffic control system which is in place. This system is now acknowledged by motoring organisations, the Police Federation and the motoring public alike to be an impediment to both safety and to the smooth running of the network. I refer of course to the so called “Smart Motorway” system that was devised by the Highways Agency (now Highways England) and introduced to the UK in 2010 during the term of office of the last Labour Government.

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Those of us who know Heathrow Airport and the surrounding (very pleasant) countryside of Surrey and Berkshire can confirm that even more air traffic associated with an additional runway, as is presently being considered by the government, is difficult to justify from an environmental or public safety standpoint. To make matters worse, after runway No. 3 there are plans for No. 4!

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Throughout my education as an Engineer at University and more surprisingly in the RAF section of the Combined Cadet Force I was led to believe that the terminal velocity of the human body when falling in air was 120mph. It did not occur to our lecturers to qualify their statement by saying “within the first 30,000ft. of sea level”.

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Those of us who were teenagers in the sixties will have special memories of witnessing the incredible feat of Engineering that enabled the landing on the Moon by NASA in August 1969. The Eagle lunar module piloted by Neil Armstrong landed in the region of the moon known as the Sea of Tranquility. For three hours Neil and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon before returning safely to Earth, thus fulfilling the prodigious ten year goal set out by President John F. Kennedy with just six months to spare.

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