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Podcast: Engineering Matters
Episode: #236 RAAC: The Misunderstood Material?
Description: RAAC, or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, enabled a boom in public building in post-war Britain. It allowed schools, hospitals and other services to be built safely and efficiently, giving working Britons services they had long been excluded from. It, and other manufactured building materials, formed the basis of what are now known as Modern Methods of Construction.
But today it is in the news for all the wrong reasons. In 2018, a RAAC roofing plank collapsed at a school in Kent, damaging equipment and facilities. At the start of the UK school year this autumn, more than a...