Tackling global engineering challenges

Lloyd’s Register Foundation is working with the Royal Academy of Engineering to support Engineering X, an international collaboration that brings together some of the world’s leading problem-solvers to address the great challenges of our age.

Engineering X brings top experts from around the world together to share best practice, explore new technologies, educate and train the next generation of engineers, build capacity, improve safety and deliver impact.

Its work brings academic rigour and a focus on safety and sustainability to the engineering professions – in doing so having an impact on every conceivable area of human life and society.

Its activities are wide-ranging – capacity-building in the academic sector to push forward emerging technologies, supporting skills development for safer engineering, and delivering relevant, practical solutions where they are most needed globally.

Combining the influential role Lloyd’s Register Foundation plays in making the world a safer place, with the Royal Academy’s influential role in engineering, Engineering X has, since its launch in 2019, been bringing global engineering innovators and practitioners together with other stakeholders across academic, government, business and NGO sectors.

Dr Hayaatun Sillem, Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“As international markets and systems become ever more complex and intertwined, we believe that collaboration, shared responsibility and mutual support between diverse communities is the only way to safeguard our future and drive positive change.”

Richard Clegg, Chief Executive at the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, said:

“This partnership is an exciting new vehicle for high impact engineering programmes that promote engineering knowledge, innovation and skills for the benefit of society. We are confident that the combined convening power of Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the Royal Academy of Engineering will lead to impactful interventions in engineering around the world.”

One of the key areas our grant has supported is a programme of work on decommissioning ships and offshore structures. From training to improve worker safety in ship recycling facilities in Bangladesh, to assessing the risks of structural failure of decommissioned offshore structures, the projects will tackle priority global safety issues as part of the Engineering X mission to achieve Safer End of Engineered Life (SEEL). The SEEL programme has awarded grants to six projects bringing together universities and industry bodies in the UK and around the world.

Safe, modern decommissioning facilities are available around the world but most ships, as well as many offshore structures, reach the end of their operational lives on a handful of poorly equipped beaches in South Asia. The International Labour Organization has classified shipbreaking among the world’s most dangerous occupations, with unacceptably high levels of fatalities, injuries and work-related disease. The Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships was adopted in 2009 but has yet to come into force.

Another Engineering X programme is supporting improving the safety of complex systems. It’s looking at practical solutions to safety challenges in the complex, interconnected systems on which modern infrastructure depends.