When you take a pill such as Anadin, you want to be very sure that what's going into your body is manufactured in the correct way. This is the precision required for pharmaceutical projects and an expert in that area joins our Amplified podcast today.
In 25 years since first joining the PM Group, Peter Farrelly has had immeasurable multi-national experience working across the full life-cycle of projects; from inception and funding through to design, procurement, construction, commissioning and qualification. PM Group itself is known for its work with leading pharma, food and medical technology companies, with 3,500 employees working in Ireland, the UK, Asia and the US.
Our chat covers everything from the challenges of constructing medical facilities to handling brownfield sites during Covid, right through to the incredible levels of sustainability PM managed at Bio Cork 2 and their award winning work on an Irish facility which generates power using the sun.
Listen below or on your podcast player!
Topics we discussed include:
- Special considerations for pharma building projects
- Do glass panelled walls work for clean rooms
- Huge impact of constant medical change on building design
- Are multifunctional facilities possible
- The biggest impact of digital on engineering
- How digitally enabled lean transformation is revolutionising their business
- What is the holy grail of electric vehicles
- How Peter would tackle the EV challenge
- Ways new graduates are innovating business
Quotes
When you take a pill you want to be sure what's going into your body is manufactured in the correct way.
Regulations will change but base skills stay the same no matter where you go
The biggest challenge we've had over the last while is speed and COVID was a driver of that.
You can only imagine the challenges of building a vaccine facility on a brownfield site with 450 people during COVID restrictions.
Guest details
Peter Farrelly is a chartered engineer who is skilled in A&E Design, Project, Construction & Operations Management and Business Development. He is the Regional Development Director for PM Group, which is known for its work with some of the world's leading pharma, food and medical technology companies. It was founded in Ireland in 1973 and today has 3,500 employees working in Ireland, the UK, Asia and the US.
Contact details
www.pmgroup-global.com
www.linkedin.com/in/peter-farrelly-3a75397
More information
Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer.
https://www.engineersireland.ie/
Transcription text
For your convenience, here is a 90% accurate automated transcript of the podcast.
Dusty Rhodes 0:00
Right now on amplified the engineers general podcast we're about to meet one of the key men at pm group. Peter Farrelly
Peter Farrelly 0:07
what an engineer is someone who's solving problems and trying to improve things and in our case, trying to improve the lives of people that our clients are making products for our providing services to.
Dusty Rhodes 0:40
Hello there, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you're welcome to amplify the engineers journal podcast, where we speak with leading members of our community of creative professionals about how engineers are delivering interesting and sustainable solutions for society. Joining us today is a chartered engineer who's skilled in AE design, project construction and operations management and business development. In his 25 years since he first joined pm group, he's seen massive growth, which gave me a ton of multinational experience working across the full lifecycle of projects from inception and funding through to design, procurement, construction, commissioning and qualification. pm group itself is known for its work with some of the world's leading pharma, food and medical technology companies. It was founded in Ireland in 1973. And today has three and a half 1000 employees working in Ireland, the UK, Asia and the US from pm group. It is a pleasure to welcome to our podcast Regional Development Director Peter Farrelly. Peter, how are you?
Peter Farrelly 1:44
I'm well, thanks. So Steve, thanks for having me on that a
Dusty Rhodes 1:47
pleasure. Tell me what attracted you to this crazy business of engineering?
Peter Farrelly 1:52
Yeah, well, that's a good question. And I suppose it's hard to know where it comes from directly because I was on the probably one of one or two in my generation across all my cousins. There was no family tradition in engineering. So but several, the next generation are taking up engineering. So maybe I've inspired somebody along the way. But I suppose I was always interested in how things work, and, and fixing things. And some of my youngest memories are having tools and trying to fix things, which I'm quite sure was actually breaking things that were working perfectly well before I got near them. But I suppose it probably comes from my upbringing, the environment that I grew up in, it was always very focused on finding solutions to problems and sometimes very novel solutions. And I suppose that's what engineers do. So although there weren't many trained engineers, in my family, I'd say there were there was a lot of engineering spirit and engineering mindset and engineering minded people that I that I grew up with. So when it came to what to study, there was a long list of various engineering courses and not much else. But I think whatever you do, you should have real interest and passion fresh. And that was the case with me and engineering. And I've, I have to say, I've never once regretted the choice. And I would say that, even for somebody that's not really sure how to do a base education in engineering can open opened up many other doors and career choices, for example, in it in finance, in teaching in management, and many other areas.
Dusty Rhodes 3:25
They call it a very portable career, don't I? Yeah, that's
Peter Farrelly 3:29
true. You know, and particularly with international recognition, through engineers, Ireland and other institutions. You know, if you need to build a building the fundamental that you know that the regulations and codes will change from place to place, but that the base skills stay the same no matter where you go,
Dusty Rhodes 3:46
Listen, let's have a chat about p m group, because the company does an awful lot of work with the farmer, very, very precise. Industry. What kind of challenges in general do you do farmer facilities come with,
Peter Farrelly 3:59
to specific challenges around that are probably the quality of what needs to be built, when you go to put something into your body, when you take a pill, you know, you buy a packet of energy and in the supermarket or somewhere else, you have to be very, very sure that what's going into your body is manufactured in the correct way. So I suppose from our point of view, it's about building those facilities and making sure that facilities are designed, built and commissioned and then validated in a way that can provide that quality and that traceability with the, with the products that are ultimately manufactured in the facility.
Dusty Rhodes 4:33
And what kind of things do you have to take into consideration when down when thinking about the building, if we're
Peter Farrelly 4:38
just talking about the basics of the flow of materials into and through the building the flow of people back to this point about what you're going to put in your body contamination comes from people so there's a big, a big emphasis on making sure that the people don't break when they're entering the facilities don't bring in anything that could contaminate the products that are in there. So a lot in the air Early stages about how the building works together the flows of materials, flows of people waste in and out raw goods, finished goods, all of those sorts of things. I think then it's just the cleanliness of the space cleanroom facilities are in a lot of pharma facilities. And they take a particular expertise and design expertise to, to implement.
Dusty Rhodes 5:22
So when you think of clean rooms, you think of something that's generally maybe in a basement with no windows and fluorescent lighting, and everything is done. Whereas people like to work in more area and brighter surroundings these days, as designed change to enable that.
Peter Farrelly 5:39
Yeah, absolutely. clean rooms can be very big spaces, very big facilities. But some of the sorts of techniques we've used is having glass paneled walls instead of some other materials. So you can actually see through to the daylight outside to external windows, and also see the other people working in the facility as well, because that can be an issue if somebody goes in an older requirements to change. And, again, an optical into some of these facilities. So you can't go in and out really quickly in some cases. So, you know, we've we've done some of those sorts of things to try and help with that.
Dusty Rhodes 6:16
If I had to work in a lab, I'd love to work in a penthouse lab. So you'd have a view? Yeah, well,
Peter Farrelly 6:21
when you when you look at what some clients are doing, particularly the, you know, clients where they have their global headquarters, and they want to attract a lot of r&d staff, like, for example, in the UK, in the Oxford, London Cambridge region, there's a lot of companies located there. And for those facilities, they will get in the most renowned world famous architects, the facilities will be to the absolute highest standards possible, they invest a lot of time in not just the lab facilities, but actually the the environment that the people will work in, to inspire the people, but also to to enable them to attract the very, very best people that can get in the market,
Dusty Rhodes 7:01
medicine and pharma. And everything is changing constantly. Does this impact the design then of the building?
Peter Farrelly 7:09
Yeah, it impacts it hugely. There are lots of different types of pharma facilities. So if I take the more traditional one, where, you know, as I said, before you get your bucks of energy and in the supermarket or some other some other drug you'll be familiar with, the type of facility to produce something like that is, is well known. And you know, there are lots of them all around the world for many, many years. And I suppose the the facility types are very different. When you look at the facilities to produce the active ingredient for a medicine, it will be very different to the facility that produces the actual tablet that you take, or the solution that you drink, or the the whatever is injected into your body, there'll be very different facilities. But if I take it from another, another angle completely, there's a whole new suite of Advanced Therapy, medicinal products at MPs are cold. And they're medicines for humans that are based on genes, tissues, or cells. And they're quite novel and quite new, some of the things that are done with that. So some classes of though these 80 MPs are considered to be personalized medicines. So if you imagine, in a facility, traditionally, a batch of tablets could be you count them in the millions of tablets, whereas in this facility, if they've taken something out of your body, and they're going to do something with the cells or genes, every person is a separate batch. So the requirements and the challenges of designing a facility such as that are entirely different to designing a facility to make traditional pharmaceutical products.
Dusty Rhodes 8:44
So can you give me an example of that, then? Yeah,
Peter Farrelly 8:46
I mean, we, a number of years ago, did a facility, it was the first of a kind in the world, actually, it was without precedent. It was a cell and gene therapy catapult facility to promote a number of companies, you know, startup phase, probably smaller companies that needed effectively what could be described as incubator space, that facility had to be designed not only to cater for all the usual farmer requirements, but also had to be designed to cater for up to 12 different tenants at the same time, all with different requirements, all with their own issues around confidentiality, access, egress, all of those types of challenges.
Dusty Rhodes 9:27
And then do you have different design considerations, then, if you're doing something, I mean, vaccines are just so important. These days, we've had COVID recently. And that's different from kind of like, you know, a tablet, it's different from something that you're doing for on a person by person basis. What what's the difference when you're working with vaccines?
Peter Farrelly 9:46
Yeah, you're absolutely right, tested as does differences, loads of similarities, but to be quite different number one, and you're dealing with a liquid and in many other cases, it's going to be a tablet format or something like that. The biggest challenge we've had or For the last while is speed, and the COVID pandemic was was a driver of that, obviously. So the types of facilities are lots of it is similar, but you're you're trying to fill into vials or syringes that will be used to inject into people. So, you know, the quality of the facility and the hygienic conditions need to be even higher than some of the more traditional facilities. You know, we've done a number of those projects. I remember during the COVID pandemic watching the news one night, and the cameras were outside the Pfizer facility that was was shipping the first batch of vaccine. And that was a facility that I was involved, I was working on a project there, we were working on a project there. And you know, it makes me very proud as an engineer that you've done good that you've, you've been involved in something like that you're helping in a very positive way. Another example, we've done a project for MSD in Belgium, to expand their vaccine manufacturing facilities, and throw up its own challenges. Because not everything we do is Greenfield, a lot of the work that we do is brownfield work. So you're going into a facility that's already in existence, and you have to cut and carve and chop it up. And in some cases, still with live production happening in that facility. So you can't bring the current production down. So we need to be very, very careful. But in in that particular project, we had probably 450 people on site at the peak, a lot of that was during COVID restriction. So you can imagine the challenges of trying to build a vaccine facility with 450 people on site during COVID restrictions. But we did it anyway. And we got through it. And it was very safe, safe project over a million hours worked on site without without any instances. So it just shows you the scale of the challenge with designing and building some of these facilities. So thinking
Dusty Rhodes 12:01
about that on on a brownfield site during COVID with foreign and 50 people working trying to expand this facility was what's what's the one solution you came up with, that you were most proud of?
Peter Farrelly 12:12
It's, it's probably not just any one solution. But the sheer logistics of getting that number of people in, you know, so a lot for something like that you're gonna have a workforce, the workforce, and that project, by the way, came from 25 different countries, oh my goodness, trying to get people in and out of the facility, trying to make sure that people could connect with their families at home. And people couldn't travel them when travel restrictions were lifted. So there was a multitude of things so hard to single out one thing that was that was better than another.
Dusty Rhodes 12:44
Let me ask you just kind of dealing with clients and and an overview on a project because clients often want something fast. And then but they also want you to be flexible. And then of course, they're always looking at price. How do you handle that?
Peter Farrelly 12:58
It's, I suppose it's a feature. It's a real challenge in our industry at the moment, every client wants something built quicker and cheaper and, you know, hold all sorts of things and all the things that you can't square all the circles, a key part of our strategy, we've embarked on a Lean transformation program that we call delta, which is stands for digitally enabled Lean transformation. And it's a way of improving and transforming our business. And at its core, we're trying to apply these Lean principles to remove wasteful activities and friction. And we're doing that through the use of all sorts of digital technologies. So I suppose that's, that's one of the ways that we're that we're doing it.
Dusty Rhodes 13:46
And digital technologies are changing everything. I mean, it's changed the way we work and people I'm working from home more and stuff like that. What's the biggest impact digital has had on your business in the last two years?
Peter Farrelly 13:57
You know, everything we're trying to do, we're trying to enable with digital, we're looking at all the aspects. When we lean something out, how can we get digital tools to help us to enable us to lock in those gains that we get from that lien and the transformation. I mean, there's loads of examples that are the more traditional ones that you'll know about, you know, all the drawing tools, all the CAD, all of those things, the paperless office, all of those things, and I suppose we also have been using just just like everyone else, you know, teams and zoom and all of those things helped us when we were all done, couldn't travel for a long time. But we're looking at technologies right across the business. And if I take something like augmented reality and virtual reality and some of our projects, and they're really transformative in terms of how we deliver our projects, and really our cutting edge compared to what we're seeing in the marketplace.
Dusty Rhodes 14:57
So looking at digital and the how it's able to transform arm the way we work and people working at home and remote working in in the office and stuff like that, how has digital kind of changed your operation in the last few years?
Peter Farrelly 15:08
Well, example we're doing it on a large data center project at the moment, we're able to go into the field, and we're able to look at the building as it's being built, you can see what's actually physically constructed on the ground, you can overlay that with what's coming next, you can find problems in real time, you can find problems before they actually happen. So tribes huge efficiency in in how we build those buildings, because you can imagine how complex some of these buildings are, the structure alone, the services within the buildings, and all of those things sort of enabled us to look at those in real time. I think, you know, this is all linked back to a more general question about continuing professional development and the importance of it, and understanding what's going on. I mean, you don't have to be an expert. In all of the systems, I wouldn't say we have very few people that will be an expert in all the systems, but it's about knowing enough about it that know how they operate, know how they can add value, and know what they can do, and being able to talk about it.
Dusty Rhodes 16:08
And what about the continuous professional development? How do you implement that into your own career?
Peter Farrelly 16:14
Well, from the get go, in my own career, I've always put a lot of focus on education. And every time I thought it was finished with education, I went back again and again. So I've said the last time that I'm done with it, but who knows what will happen, what will happen in the future. So I've done quite a bit of formal education. And going through the process with engineers, Ireland to be a chartered engineer to be a fellow of engineers, Ireland. But that's it, there's also just keeping up with the day to day. So there's lots of stuff that happens within the industry, attending industry events, and going to conferences. Again, engineers, Ireland run a lot of really, really interesting, CPD modules that, you know, it might be somewhat unrelated to your day job, but some very, very interesting stuff. And some of it is directly related. Some of it is highly applicable to the things we're doing every day and the stuff that I'm doing every day. So I'd say it's a mixture of all of those things. But even I'm in a very fortunate position. That, you know, I spend a lot of time client facing with our clients are talking to people, and you know, just talking to different clients, you learn new things, you learn different things. And again, across the sector's we work, and we work in in different sectors. And actually, that's probably one real advantage we have because some of the principles that were able to use and apply in one sector, we can then bring to other sectors, and it brings some really good innovation to those sectors.
Dusty Rhodes 17:50
Is there one thing just you mentioned, engineers, Ireland, it tell me the one thing that you've done with them, that maybe you didn't want to, but actually had a good effect on your career,
Peter Farrelly 18:01
you know, the process of becoming a chartered chartered engineer is not a simple one. And that's for good reason. You know, you don't have somebody that rocks up tomorrow and says, I want to be a chartered engineer. So there's quite a bit of work that has to go into, you know, making sure that you get the right experience and making sure that you, you've covered the areas that you understand enough about the industry. So that's, that's a process that was, you know, it was it was tough to do, but highly valuable once it was done.
Dusty Rhodes 18:32
And what was the one thing though there that do you have something in your mind me, I don't really want to do this, but you did it. And and it worked out?
Peter Farrelly 18:40
Well, you know, simple things like talking about yourself and writing statements about how good you are and, you know, fill in filling in application forms to say how wonderful you are doing all of these things. Certainly doesn't come easy to me. I'd prefer other people maybe, to say it was it was it was warranted or marriage, rather than having say it myself,
Dusty Rhodes 19:04
it's always much easier to sell somebody else than to sell yourself that sort of I have found but if you've picked up ways of doing that with engineers, if that's all good, listen, let's talk about one of the biggest innovations because we were talking about innovation and digital and all that kind of stuff. One of the things that we see in our day to day lives now are electric cars. Do you find this an interesting engineering problem?
Peter Farrelly 19:27
Yeah, actually, the the whole Evie sector is part of our strategy within pm group forms part of our strategy. So I suppose it's interesting and challenging. It's a real strategic growth market, but it's growing at an exponential rate. And there are a few companies that can support the sector that have the right experience. And when you look at the profile of the clients that are involved in the sector, so you have lots of absolutely new startup companies, and like I mean, absolute starting from scratch and they're looking to be big players, you have jayvees. And because there are so many people hedging their bets, they don't know who's going to win this race, to get the best electric battery, you know, it's, it's the Holy Grail at the moment, you have many old companies. So for example, all the major automotive car companies that are as old as the motorcar are involved, and some of the large chemical companies, and it's interesting to see that some of those companies have actually not succeeded, they've pulled back from the market a bit or the left to others a little bit, because the challenges are so great, or they took the wrong bet. And they've just said, you know, we're not throwing any more good money after bad, and we're just, we're just gonna leave it there. And some, some are failing, despite all the investment and experience, so a big challenge for us to know what clients we should work with. But I suppose the other challenge in that whole sector is there's when people talk about Evie batteries, there's so many different types of projects within the sector. So at one end, there's the mining for the raw materials. Now, we're not involved in that at all. But then you take those raw materials, and you turn them in to the refined battery materials. And that's quite an interesting one, when I spoke before about how you can transfer skills from one sector to another, and some of the equipment so you know, some of those battery materials that come out at the end of that process. Some of it's like a powder. And, you know, you're using the same equipment from the same suppliers, and fundamentally a lot of the same design as you would use for a pharmaceutical facility that's producing some powder, or a dairy facility that's producing infant formula. So it's quite interesting, even though they're totally and utterly different sectors, some of the same technologies, and some of the same ideas can apply. So we're able to bring that thinking and knowledge from sector to sector. And once the once those raw materials are made, you then make battery sales. And that's another another part of the supply chain. And then those battery cells are assembled into battery packs. And that's what will actually go into your car, your electric car that you're that you're going to see on the road. At the other end of the scale now, which is an absolutely booming market currently, is the recycling to get the raw materials out because they're they're very difficult to get to mine initially. So getting those raw materials back out, and putting them back into the supply chain to start the process again.
Dusty Rhodes 22:36
So Peter Farrelly, let's imagine you're the Elon Musk of the evey battery world, and you've got $10 billion in your back pocket, what would you do?
Peter Farrelly 22:46
That's a That's a good question. And I interested in the last point I made there about the battery recycling. And it's probably probably a focus that I focus on because, you know, whoever wins the race, or whoever gets the best best bet and produces the best battery at some point that will need to be recycled, and you'll need to take it back out. Also, personally, the sustainability aspect of it. I like it's a very, very important part for me and for our business. So I like that part of it too. So I probably would bet, maybe not all 10. But maybe one of my billions on on that sector.
Dusty Rhodes 23:29
Let's talk about pm group, once again, because I mean, the group is growing phenomenally. It started in 1973, as I said, and then kind of to the 90s and the naughties. expanding into the States and Asia and all across Europe and stuff like that. Give me an idea of how big the company is now today.
Peter Farrelly 23:45
Yeah, so we're an international firm headquartered in Ireland, and we're delivering critical facilities. So the more complex, the better. And that's probably what, what our sweet spot is. So if it's a very, very straightforward facility, and I suppose some of the facilities you've heard me talking about today are not straightforward. So the more complex, the better. You mentioned the we're, we're 49 years in business. And we have been trading internationally for quite a long time. We were just just in last few months and celebrated 25 years in Poland, equally 10 years in Boston, I think we must be 11 or 12 years in China now. And next year will be 25 years operating in the UK. And in terms of scale, where we have about 3600 people at the moment. And we're our turnover is approximately 400 million. And I think a unique feature of pm group, which is we believe is unique among our peers is that we're employee owned. So every employee in the company has an opportunity to be a shareholder in the company. It means that everybody can share the benefits of the company and share in the success of the company. But it also we Think drives a different mindset. It drives that owners mindset right through the company, no matter what anyone's doing, what their position is, what age they are, what level they're at, in the company. If you're a shareholder in the company, you're invested as an owner in the company as well.
Dusty Rhodes 25:15
One of the problems with a company that is growing is finding new staff. And I believe you've taken out somewhere around 500 new graduates through through this next year. Where are you getting these people from? And are they up to? It's a terrible thing to say, are they up to the job? But you know, when somebody's coming in new and you've got to train them, do you not? I mean, what challenges do you have that?
Peter Farrelly 25:37
Well, I'll answer the last bit of that, first, are they up to the job, I mean, I have to say, I'm blown away by the people that I meet. First of all, they're they're typically really, really well educated, they're typically really well motivated. They are, you know, credit to their, to their parents, their education system, their environment, wherever they've come from, I mean, they're definitely up to the task, I would say, there's a lot of bad press about people and you know, younger people, and, you know, not wanting to work in Olympics too much. I mean, I don't see much of that in the people we have. And maybe our selection process is very good, I hope it is. The graduates that I've seen are very, very, very high quality. And it's not just their technical ability, but what they bring to the company, they really challenge your thinking in a positive way. They look at things in a completely different way. They don't have the same experiences, as as we have. So they're coming at things from a different point of view completely, which is often a very refreshing and very good point of view, and linked back to innovation, which I can come back to in a second. But the amount that they're bringing to our innovation, drive is huge. But it's not just graduates, we also have apprentices and interns of the company, we're taking them in, and our schemes are accredited by the main professional bodies such as engineers, Ireland, I, Mackay, ik me subzi, they might mean nothing to you dusty, but so some of the listeners that those institutions will be will be important, we probably took on over 1000 graduates in the past five years, 500 new graduates coming in now, it's a huge challenge to keep those people coming in and to find all those people. But we're, we're working hard to do it. And I suppose the other thing that's really important to us is diversity. And we've put a big effort into trying to balance out our resources and our personnel. As you know, the engineering profession is dominated by by men, there's they're mostly mostly men in the profession. And particularly traditionally, the bottom 2020 to 40% of our graduates are female, which most compare very, very favorably with any of our peers or any other similar industries. That's a huge achievement and took a lot of work schedules. That point.
Dusty Rhodes 27:53
You mentioned that the graduates and new people coming into the company really help with innovation and challenging your thinking and looking at things different ways. What way are you innovating.
Peter Farrelly 28:03
I suppose the most tangible way we're working on innovation at the moment internally is, I mentioned previously, we invest approximately 4 million annually in innovation. But we run an innovation action awards scheme. That's what we call it innovation in action. It's where we get ideas from everyone in the company. It's open to everyone. And there are a number of categories. And people submit ideas. And those ideas are evaluated to see what innovation can derive from that. So they're in technical areas, non technical areas, where people have published articles in health and safety, you know, the most disruptive ideas, and I mean, disruptive in a good way, in a bad way. But it's amazing what's gone through from that. And I mean, you'd expect some innovation. From a lot of technical people, we have a lot of very, very experienced highly technical people in the company. But also, as we talked about, from the graduates that are just in the door, and they see something and they go, why aren't you doing it this way? Or why can't we do it that way? Or the here's something that I'm doing in my, you know, my personal life? Can we look at that. And some of those, some of those ideas are really good. Also, we have some ideas really good from our administration teams from our finance teams from right across the company. So it's not just from an engineering point of view. And we've just actually recently launched a new innovate app, bringing it right to people's pocket our fingertips. And you know, that it's not that it's not just something that we do once a year, we have an award scheme, and we go through this, it's that ideas are submitted, they're evaluated, and they're continually being brought on as projects that we run with and that we develop in the company
Dusty Rhodes 29:46
on a scale of one to 10 How would you say this attitude of innovation and actually embracing that change benefits the company?
Peter Farrelly 29:56
Oh, like a 10 a 10. Yeah, I mean, it's well put it this way, if we weren't doing it, the company would would fail, you know, you can't stand still. So innovation. And I think any other company would say the same, you know, you need, you need to be innovating constantly just to stand still. But it's trying to not just standstill, but to push it on to the next level as well to try and get ahead of the curve to try and see Potter our clients looking for what's the next thing that's coming that we can do? And how can we work with our clients? And a lot of this is about working with clients, our clients are demanding it, it's not just stuff that we want to do our clients want us to do it as well.
Dusty Rhodes 30:36
Why do you think engineers in particular, are more open to change in innovation,
Peter Farrelly 30:42
the types of work that we do, certainly in pm group, the type of work we do, like, the no two projects are the same. You know, it's, it's, it's very, very different. It's always very different. So every time even if the projects are very similar, if the challenges are similar, there are always new challenges and different challenges, or whatever they may be at a particular time or on a particular project. So you sort of you constantly have to innovate just at that project level, or at that project delivery level. So I suppose it's a natural extension, then, when it comes to taking a step back and looking at how we can do it at a business level.
Dusty Rhodes 31:18
Let me ask you about one or two more projects that pm group have have done just to wrap up our podcast today. And in particular, I wanted to ask you about one that's won a number of awards for the company. And that's the Yonten project.
Peter Farrelly 31:30
Yeah, so this is the bio cork two facility in Ringaskiddy. In cork, it's 19,000 square meters expansion is effectively doubles the size of the existing facility. And it's producing immunology and oncology treatments. So very, very important treatments for people that are that have those conditions. And you mentioned about award winning. So I mean, it won the ISP, which is the International Society of pharmaceutical engineers, again, people in the industry would recognize that it won the facility of the Year award. And in 2021, there's another publication that you know, some boring engineers will be concerned about cold the Engineering News Record, which is locked for projects and and often our competitors globally, and have won the Best Global Project Award for 2020. And in addition, and really importantly, to us, it also won a major safety award. But I suppose the other interesting aspect of that project is it had a leading sustainability aspect to it, somewhere between 25 and 30%, energy savings across the buildings and processes. It used over 60%, less water 40% less electricity, and 99% of the construction waste that was generated was recycled. So a strong sustainability angle to the project to
Dusty Rhodes 32:50
speaking of sustainability, let's wrap up with another project actually in Cork. And this kind of I find this funny, because in Ireland, we're talking an awful lot about wind energy when it comes to sustainability and wind farms off the coast or up on hills and stuff like that. But you've done a particular project in Cork, which is using the power of the sun,
Peter Farrelly 33:11
correct? Yeah. That's a project for Eli Lilly. And it's a 16 acre facility. It's the single largest solar farm in the Republic of Ireland, which produce 5.6 megawatts of power. So it's a big facility. And I suppose to just put some dimensions on what that means. It's the equivalent of almost 1000 cars, driving 10 million miles and using half a million gallons of fuel, or 500 million mobile phone chargers. So very interesting project very important project, again, showing our clients drive towards sustainability and how we can help them with that.
Dusty Rhodes 33:50
Peter Farrelly it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today and thank you for sharing so much on the podcast.
Peter Farrelly 33:54
Thanks. So see, it was nice being able.
Dusty Rhodes 33:56
If you'd like to find out more about what we spoke about on the podcast today, you'll find show notes and link details in the description area of your podcast player right now. Our amplified podcast was produced by just pod.io for engineers journal, you will find advanced episodes on the website at engineers journal.ie or just press follow on your podcast player to get our next episode automatically. Until next time for myself Dusty Rhodes, thank you so much for listening. Take care.