Practical Engineering: engineering in plain sight
Civil engineer Grady Hillhouse explains how dams, tunnels, roads and other structures we pass every day actually work.
What it is
@practicalengineering is the TikTok of Grady Hillhouse, a licensed civil engineer and the creator of the Practical Engineering YouTube channel. Before explaining infrastructure full time, he spent nearly ten years in private practice working on dams, hydraulic structures and riverbank restoration. In short English-language clips, he shows how the everyday built world works, from culverts to power line towers.
Why we picked it
Infrastructure is invisible right up until it fails. Grady has a gift for revealing how much thinking went into a concrete channel by the highway or a grate over a storm drain. He mixes tabletop models, animation and real footage, and a few videos in you start reading your street like a textbook.
We also like that he does not sand the edges off. Grady covers failures and trade-offs as readily as successes, and explains why some designs look odd but make perfect sense. His book Engineering in Plain Sight (2022) works as an illustrated field guide to the constructed environment, covering the grid, roads, railways, bridges and tunnels.
Where to start
- The water videos on dams, spillways, drainage and stormwater, which is Grady's professional home turf.
- The Engineering in Plain Sight series on roadside mysteries: boxes, pipes and barriers you never noticed.
- Breakdowns of well-known infrastructure failures and the lessons engineers took from them.
- The full-length videos on the Practical Engineering YouTube channel.
- The Engineering in Plain Sight book if you like a physical reference.
Who it's for
Curious minds of any age, engineering students, and parents raising kids who ask how everything works. You need some English, but the models and diagrams carry a lot of the explanation on their own.
Quick answers
Who runs Practical Engineering? Grady Hillhouse, a licensed civil engineer with nearly a decade of experience designing infrastructure before becoming a full-time educator.
Does he have a book? Yes: Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment, published in 2022.
Can I watch without the app? Yes. The TikTok profile opens in a browser, and longer versions are on YouTube.
