Brendan is a Chartered Engineer with over 40 years’ experience in M&E building services. He established Dervan Engineering Consultants (DEC) in 1999 which merged with Cundall, a global multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy firm, in 2016. He has a wide range of experience in the design, installation, and maintenance of M&E services in various building sectors. He retired from mainstream consultancy in 2019 and set up Best Training which provides specialist CPD services to the M&E Sector. He is the author of a number of publications on the National Rules for Electrical Installations / IS10101. He currently represents Engineers Ireland on the NSAI’s ETC TC2 Committee and is Chair of Engineers Ireland Electrical Division.
Q1. What do you do, and why?
I’m a retired consulting engineer and I spent many periods of my career trying to find staff, train and retain them – it’s very challenging! It’s hard to find the time to train people. With over 40 years of experience at retirement, I didn’t want to give it all up and not to share that knowledge, so I feel I’m doing something valuable and giving back to the industry I worked in by delivering badly needed CPD training. And I love doing it.
I play a bit of traditional Irish music as well – I like performing, playing music and singing to people that are interested in listening. There are actually a lot of parallels between that and delivering CPD! I put a lot of work into getting the presentations right and delivering them well on the day, so seeing people benefitting from the training, and enjoying it, is really worthwhile.
Q2. Tell us a little bit about the work you currently do with Engineers Ireland?
After retiring, I set up Best Training and started to deliver training courses through Engineers Ireland. The courses are primarily aimed at electrical engineers working in the building services design sector. However, many of the courses, such as Data Centres - Introduction to M&E Services, are attended by a wide variety of professionals.
When I was running my own practice, I found it challenging to attract people in a small consultancy. The biggest difficulty was finding people with data centre experience, so we trained our own people in house. I started developing courses, but of course, it was hard to find the time between recruiting staff, bidding for work, managing the office and chasing invoices. Training always played second-fiddle.
I always said to myself that I would develop this data centre CPD course when I retire, and it would be ideal for training existing staff working on schools and offices and other less complicated jobs, to get them to work on data centres.
The Data Centres - Introduction to M&E Services has been a total success, it’s probably one of the most popular courses I do with Engineers Ireland – that and the Overview of the new Irish Wiring Rules I.S. 10101.
Q3. What changes/trends do you see these days?
The biggest trend I’m seeing is climate change and the impact that is having on the electrical industry. The most significant change in electrical engineering relates to the ongoing decarbonisation of the electricity grid and the gradual move away from fossil fuel for generation of electricity, heating, and transport. From a building services perspective, this means the inclusion of solar PV panels, electric vehicle charging points, and electric heat pump systems in most modern buildings.
Obviously electrical engineers are also involved in the design and construction of onshore and offshore wind farms. This is outside my own area of expertise, but it has increased the need for medium voltage expertise which is another one of the courses I deliver through Engineers Ireland.
Of course, the whole data centre world is also evolving too. Every time I deliver this course there’s always something new to tell people.
Data centres are getting a lot bad press at the moment: they are rightly viewed as high energy consumers and being blamed for our shortfall in electrical capacity. I believe there are much more serious issues to worry about, such as the fact that we have only two gas connections onto the island of Ireland both of which are connected via Moyle in Scotland. We are one of the few if not the only country in Europe that does not have an LNG Terminal – we’ve no backup system if our link the Moyle interconnector fails or reduces its capacity for whatever reason. The rest of Europe has multiple gas connections and multiple electricity grid connections, so they have very robust grid systems whereas ours is still very reliant on this single gas interconnector with Scotland.
Data centres regularly feature in the media in relation to the vast amounts of power they consume and the associated problems of grid congestion around the greater Dublin area where the vast majority of the facilities are located. According to the CSO, data centres in Ireland consumed 14% of our overall electric energy in 2021 up from 5% in 2015. Eirgrid had predicted at one stage that data centres could be responsible for almost 30% of our electricity demand by 2030.
However in terms of security of supply data centres should be viewed as a solution to the problem rather than the cause. The overall demand of the data centre sector is well above 1 GW at this stage with corresponding levels of back up generators. With this massive levels of embedded generation capacity, data centres they are ideally suited to help with our current energy crisis. They have the capability to transfer their loads to standby generators at very short notice which is the equivalent of Eirgrid having a fast response 1 GW generator.
Q4. What is the most interesting thing that you have learnt or has happened when delivering training?
I regularly use the phrase, “every day is a school day” during my CPD talks. I try to reassure people that being an engineer is a constant learning process. I am retired now, and I am still learning new things about electrical engineering, in particular the rollout of new technologies associated with our climate change policy such as solar PV systems, EV charging, heat pump technology, and so on.
I sometimes get asked questions during a CPD talk which I don’t have the answer to, so I need to go off and research the topic afterwards and perhaps update my slides for future reference. Sometimes attendees at CPD talks share their experience with me regarding new installation practices.
Q5. When you are not delivering training/working, what do you like to do to unwind/do in your spare time?
I have lots of interest in life besides Engineering. Top of my list is playing traditional Irish music which I do on a weekly basis with a few friends. I really enjoy learning new tunes and playing them in a session with other people. I am also an amateur genealogist. I have produced a book on my own family history and have helped a few friends to research theirs. I have a keen interest in learning languages. I speak Spanish and I am working hard I try to bring my Irish up to the same level. I was a keen cyclist at one time and got back into it after retiring. My plan is to take it back up soon and go cycling in Spain next spring. In the meantime, I do a lot of walking and jogging and have recently caught the bug for the early morning dip in the sea.
Upcoming courses include: