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5 min. read, Sept. 2025
Engineering feats in construction
Construction isn’t just practical. What people design and build can inspire awe and make you realise just what we’re capable of. With enough planning, inspiration and determination we can create structures that seem impossible.
Our top five engineering feats in construction show off some of these projects that didn’t seem possible until people went ahead and made them anyway.
The Millau Viaduct
The Millau Viaduct was designed to solve a seemingly simple problem: how can traffic congestion be reduced near Millau in France’s Aveyron region? The location was a busy road route through the Massif Central that people used to reach the south of France and Spain. In the summer it became Europe’s busiest bottleneck with 20 kilometre queues not uncommon.
The solution was to build the tallest bridge in the world over the entire Tarn Valley. Designed by architect Norman Foster and engineer Michel Virlogeux, the Viaduct comprises eight consecutive cable-stayed spans that would total 8,100 feet in height if they were stacked on top of each other. The total height of the bridge is 343 metres – taller than the Eiffel Tower.
The design had to take into account high winds, the environmental impact, the visual impact and the practical barriers you would expect when building something unprecedented. It succeeded on all counts and has delivered environmental and community benefits on top.
Taipei 101 mass damper system
Taipei 101, formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Centre, is located in the capital of Taiwan and demonstrates the power of engineering. It was the world’s first skyscraper over half a kilometre in height and is still the eleventh-tallest building in the world – but that’s not even the most impressive engineering feat Taipei 101 lays claim to.
Typhoon winds and earthquake tremors are common in the east of Taiwan and represent a real danger to tall buildings. Taipei 101 was built to withstand winds of up to 60 meters per second and a 1-in-2,500 years earthquake due to its position just 600 metres from a major fault line. The innovative engineering solution was a 660 tonne, $130m steel pendulum that was installed in the heart of the building.
It's suspended between the 92nd and 88th floors and sways to offset movement caused by weather events and tremors. It reduces the movement of the building by 40% and is the largest damper ball in the world. It’s greatest highlight was movement of 1 metre in 2015 when Typhoon Soudelor hit Taipei. This feat of engineering is now also a popular tourist attraction.
The Channel Tunnel
There’s not much more difficult than tunnelling because there are so many things that can go wrong. When it’s under the sea bed and contains a public transport system, avoiding disaster becomes even more complex. The Channel Tunnel is arguably the finest example of tunnelling in human history. It’s a feat of engineering that continues to amaze on a daily basis.
This key link between the UK and France that has been imagined in various forms since at least the early 1800s. However, only modern engineering has made it possible. The tunnel is actually three tunnels buried 250 feet beneath the sea bed – a line in each direction plus a service tunnel. 25 of its 32 mile length is underwater and trains going through reach 100 mph.
The Institution of Civil Engineers has described it as one of the ‘7 wonders of the engineering world’ and it’s easy to see why. Digging down safely under the sea bed is one thing, but installing a train system with all the risks that come with it is another entirely. It’s a one-off and the longest undersea tunnel in the world.
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Staying underground, we turn to Switzerland for our next engineering feat in construction. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is another wonder of the modern world. This is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider, built in collaboration with 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and labs around the world.
It lies 175 metres underground and the tunnel which holds the collider is 27 kilometres in circumference. That space is used to smash particles together at extreme high-energy states so that we can see what they contain. It’s a giant experiment that aims to discover the fundamental truths of the universe, such as the Higgs boson particle that was discovered in 2012.
The LHC qualifies as one of the most impressive engineering feats in construction not just because of its immense size and the depth at which it exists. That large scale is combined with engineering on the microscopic scale. It’s perfect down to the smallest level, and work by hundreds of engineers keeps it that way.
The Burj Khalifa
A list of engineering feats in construction should include the world’s tallest building. Standing at 829.8 metres tall, the Burj Khalifa is a serious feat of engineering on every level. Unprecedented calculations, designs and construction work went into the tower which now stands tall above Dubai.
Areas of special concern were the foundations and how the building would deal with wind resistance. Both contributed to fears that the building could topple so innovative solutions were needed. Engineering was so crucial to the Burj Khalifa that the solutions to these issues defined what the building eventually looked like.
It cost approximately $1.5bn dollars to build and attracted controversy throughout construction, but for now it’s the tallest building in the world. Even when Jeddah Tower completes in Saudi Arabia, the Burj Khalifa will remain a groundbreaking feat of engineering in construction.