In 2013, Dublin City Council (DCC) applied for the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge after discussions with Dublin City University on the opportunities of solar power in the city. Solar is a growing source of energy in cities on a similar latitude to Dublin and we wanted to understand if it was economic for DCC to use it on its own buildings. The Smarter Cities Challenge awards successful cities with €500,000 worth of IBM staff time to concentrate on the topic for three weeks and ...

Author: Ruairí Ó Conchúir, project manager, MulkearLIFE MulkearLIFE is a five year, partnership-based project working on the restoration of the Mulkear River catchment, which forms part of the Lower Shannon Special Area of Conservation (SAC). It is one of the most important integrated catchment management projects in Ireland and a flagship EU co-funded LIFE Nature project with a €1.75 million budget. Inland Fisheries Ireland is the lead partner, working with the Office of Public Works (OPW) ...

  Author: Paul MacDonald, CEng MIEI, executive engineer/training officer, Kildare National Roads Office The Dublin Tunnel is a 4.5km-long, twin-bore tunnel connecting Dublin Port to the M50 Motorway ring. The tunnel was proposed by Dublin City Council in order to remove heavy goods vehicles from the city centre for safety and environmental benefits. The tunnel project was funded by Dublin City Council, the National Roads Authority and the European Union. The Dublin Tunnel is a unique ...

The Central Library represents the biggest single investment by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in a civic amenity. Under the 2004-2010 Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (DLR) County Development Plan, the Central Library was envisaged as a crucial element of a programme of regeneration. The councillors agreed to proceed to an architectural competition and to make funding available for the Central Library at a meeting in 2006. The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) organised and ran ...

  The redevelopment of Grangegorman is now well under way and Roadbridge Civil Engineering and Building Contractors has been awarded a major package of works, valued at €26 million, which is the Site Infrastructure and Public Realm Contract. A new, world-class mental health facility, the Phoenix Care Centre, is already fully operational. Next September, the campus is going to accommodate 1,000 students from Dublin Institute of Technology and a further 10,000 students by September 2017. ...

Authors: Alan Kavanagh (technical manager) and Gearoid Lohan (general manager), Atlantic Bitumen; Denis Ryan (general manager) and Jennifer Molloy (technical manager), SIAC Bituminous Products Ltd EME (or enrobé à module élevé in French) is a very dense, binder rich, continuously graded mix that was developed by the LCPC in France in the 1990s. The binder used to make EME is a very hard 10/20 pen grade. The combination of a dense mix, high binder content (typically of the order 5.3%) and the ...