A Century of Innovation: Joe Walsh, General Manager, Siemens Ireland (members-only)

What does it take to stay at the cutting edge of technology while also fostering innovation, sustainability, and personal growth?

Today, we explore how one global powerhouse continues to reinvent itself in Ireland through groundbreaking projects, strategic acquisitions, and a deep investment in people. From historic feats like the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric scheme to the rise of digital and AI, this episode covers the past, present, and future of engineering excellence. We’ll uncover how digitalisation is revolutionising infrastructure, and why a culture of continuous learning and collaboration is now more critical than ever.

Our guest began his journey as an apprentice electrician and rose through the ranks to help shape the future of one of Ireland’s most innovative engineering and technology companies. Now serving as General Manager and Head of Fire and Security Solutions at Siemens Ireland, it’s a pleasure to welcome Joe Walsh to the podcast.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
How the Ardnacrusha legacy still matters today’s engineering landscape
Building a career from apprentice electrician to General Manager of Siemens Ireland
Leveraging AI, digital twins, and automation to transform infrastructure
Tackling global challenges like sustainability and resource efficiency
Culture, collaboration & lifelong learning: a people-first approach

GUEST DETAILS
Joe Walsh is the General Manager of Siemens Limited in Ireland, a role he has held since November 2021. He also heads the company's Solutions and Services division, overseeing areas such as fire safety, electronic security, building automation, and smart lighting.

Joe is deeply committed to advancing sustainable and digital technologies, playing a pivotal role in projects like the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme and initiatives aimed at decarbonising data centres through renewable energy and green hydrogen solutions. His leadership extends to standardisation efforts, serving as Chair of the NSAI TC16 Working Group on Fire Detection and Alarm Systems, where he has been instrumental in modernising Ireland's fire safety standards.

Known for his authentic leadership style, Joe emphasises collaboration, continuous learning, and innovation. His dedication to these principles has been central to Siemens' century-long presence and ongoing success in Ireland.

https://ie.linkedin.com/in/joewalsh1965

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/

Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES
'Where is my passion? It's to take the current business that we have and the model that we have and bring it into the future.' - Joe Walsh

'We work really hard to create a sense of belonging and ownership.' - Joe Walsh

'It's not what you know today. It's more about how you learn. That's the real trick.' - Joe Walsh

'We have a term we use in Siemens, if Siemens knew what Siemens knows. Experience is the sum of your mistakes.' - Joe Walsh

KEYWORDS
#Engineering #Challenges #Siemens #Infrastructure #Fire #AI #DigitalTwins #Sustainability #Innovation #Leadership

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription.

Dusty Rhodes 00:04
Engineering is all about solving real-world challenges, making our cities smarter, infrastructure safer, and industries more efficient.

Joe Walsh 00:11
You know, whether it's a project not going right or or anything else, you will find that in Siemens, they're very, very likely going to be many other people in other countries who have had the same problems, more importantly, had the same solutions. So there's always somebody to turn to, there's always somebody to get advice from. There's always somebody who has been in that situation. We have a term we use in Siemens. If Siemens knew what Siemens knows.

Dusty Rhodes 00:42
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes. Welcome to Amplified the Egineers Journal Podcast today, we're exploring the future of infrastructure, the critical role of safety and sustainability and the leadership qualities that it takes to get us there. Our guest will be sharing insights on the importance of fire and engineering, how their company undertook one of Ireland's first-ever major infrastructure projects, and how they are driving innovation towards our future. It's a pleasure to welcome the General Manager and Executive Director at Siemens Limited Ireland, Joe Walsh, how are you?

Joe Walsh 01:14
Yeah, thanks, Dusty. I'm fine. No problems. Looking forward to our chat.

Dusty Rhodes 01:23
Well, listen, let's start off with if someone was to look at your career. I mean, it's pretty clear to see the fire is your thing? Is there a particular story that you can tell us that first sparked your interest in fire and engineering?

Joe Walsh 01:37
I started as an apprentice, I served my time as an electrician, and I totally enjoyed that, and I learned some fantastic life skills during that process. Now they were different times, and lots of things about the construction industry were completely different than they are today. And then as I came to the end of that, of course, these were in the days we didn't have aI at that point, but I knew that I wanted a little bit more. So I actually went back to school and did some industrial electronics. And that then opened up other doors with the background of the electrical trade and the electronics opened up specialties. Let's put it that way. So there's lots of specialties around the electrical industry, whether that's Power Factor or heating and ventilation. As it happens, my first job was actually with a telephone company. But again, you know, with the combination of Electrical and Electronics, those sorts of things open up. And then from there, I got a job in an Irish company, and they were doing fire detection systems. So I have to say, I totally enjoyed that role. And I was able to use, you know, the very practical skill set that I had from the electrical industry and the electronics and get into this for detection and alarm systems. And that was great. That was a great time. That was a small Irish company called champion for a defense, and that would that was really a lot of good learning in there. One of the, one of the things I learned very quickly was this equipment is not going to give me any trouble at all. You know, you learn the equipment very easily. It either does it or it doesn't do it. And if it doesn't do it, you find out why, and you solve it and you move on. The real challenge was always going to be around people and delivering projects.

Dusty Rhodes 03:52
Let's move on and chat about Siemens, because Siemens has been established in Ireland for a century, at this stage, 100 years, and the company's first gig here was, it was big. Tell me everything.

Joe Walsh 04:08
Well, I mean, we're very proud 2025 we celebrate our centenary. So we're very proud that we have been in Ireland and we have been supporting the Irish economy in all of that time. Of course, it started in 1925, we were incorporated in 1925, and the reason we were incorporated was to build the Shannon scheme at Ardnacrusha. And that really was a fantastic project. There are so many aspects to that project, but generally speaking, if you just imagine, at that time, that was our first government, we weren't long nailed of a very nasty Civil War, and there was still a lot of lingering tensions at that time, and many parts of Europe. Were still coming out of the disaster of World War One. So it was an uncertain time, and a young Siemens engineer, Thomas McLaughlin, he was working for he was from Dundalk, and he was working for Siemens in Berlin. And he went to his bosses in Siemens. Siemens had done some hydro electric plants in Europe, and he put it to them that there was a fantastic opportunity to harness the power of the Shannon and they got on board with that, and they they put together a white paper, and they presented it to the forced Irish government. The investment was 5.2 million Sterling, which at the time was 20% of GDP. I think, don't quote me on this, but I think in today's money, that's probably about 25 billion. So either way, it's a very large sum, which in itself, was a very large risk. But to be fair, the forced government, they had the courage, because they could see that taking Ireland from a rural, non industrial society into an industrial society where we could bring power into every house and every farm, made perfect sense. And there was, there was, there was pressure on that government at the time not to invest so much in Ardnacrusha rather to do something on the Liffey do something smaller. But they stuck with it, and they they didn't just give the contract to Siemens, by the way, they went to Europe, and they took some second opinions from other countries in Scandinavia and Switzerland, to go through the white paper to see, were there any, you know, big gaps in it. But anyway, there weren't. And we started in 1925 as a baby country, just you know, kind of emerging into the world.

Dusty Rhodes 06:59
How many people did it take to build that facility there.

Joe Walsh 07:08
At the height of the construction, there was up to 5000 people employed. Now that number was a combination of German engineers from Siemens who were on site and lived on site. And then lots of local labor. And when I say local labor, that was from all over Ireland. It wasn't just from Limerick and Clare. There was labor from all over Ireland. Involved in Ireland Crusher, because there was there was there was work.

Dusty Rhodes 07:40
So at the height it was 5000 and when the project was finished, then began generating power. How much of the country's power did it generate?

Joe Walsh 07:47
Well, remember, we were starting at zero, right? More or less starting at zero, right? So it generates 83 megawatts, which at that time was enough to power the entire country at that time today. It's a walking power station today. And today, it continues to generate. And it depending on the particular day and how much wind is blowing, and other variables, it generates between two and 3% depending on what ESB need on the network at that time. So at the time, it was 87 megawatts, which was easily enough to power the nation. Because remember, you know, if you went into a household at that point, it was just one life and one stopper. Entirely different, entirely different today.

Dusty Rhodes 08:39
I mean, I know, but it's phenomenal to think, like, you know, when you think of Ireland and the pictures that you have of the Civil War, and I always think of the Michael Collins movie and stuff like that, like, you know, to think that the company came in here, it started here, took on that massive project with so many 1000 people. I was generating electricity for the entire just getting electricity to the entire country, as well as building the plant was was a phenomenal achievement. And then when you think that 100 years later, it's still working, I can't think of very many engineering companies today, or very many companies today, can kind of go well, we did this gig 100 years ago, and it's still working.

Joe Walsh 09:19
I can tell you, in Ardnacrusha at the ESB team who look after Ardnacrusha, they welcome visitors. And if you go and see it, it's really powerful, and it's it's very inspiring to see how passionate the ESB staff are about the place. I mean, I was actually there last week. And the takeaway, you know, looking at the head race and the drop and the tail race and the turbines, that's really powerful engineering. It's fantastic scale of engineering. But that's not what I took away. What. What I took away was the passion that the ASB staff have for the place the heart is in it. Let me just leave it at that the heart is in it, and that that was my takeaway when I walked away last week.

Dusty Rhodes 10:13
But when you get into, you know, kind of an industry like engineering, people get into it because they like it, and there's a challenge, and they do have a passion for it. In your own position at the moment, at the head of Siemens, what passion do you have at the moment for what? What are your passion projects?

Joe Walsh 10:31
Well, there, there are lots of different projects. And I mean, since Ardnacrusha, we have been involved in lots of varied projects. I mean, just just for example, after Ardnacrusha, we continue to work with ESB. Today, we continue to work with ESB. We were very much involved with the turbines in Turlock hill. We did the electrification of the Dart. We did the baggage handling system in terminal two of Dublin airport. We did the first CT scanner in Ireland. We did the first MRI in Ireland. And we continue to work with all sorts of industries, whether they're Irish industries or international industries. We work behind the scenes, helping them on their journey towards sustainability and digitalisation. Now to answer So, sort of the projects are very varied, but to answer your question, uh, what? Where's my passion? I mean, it's to take the current business that we have and the model that we have and bring it into the future. So if you peel back Siemens and open it up. We are in our DNA and engineering, an engineering company. We have been selling solutions and products for years, and we would have this very strong brand that if you buy a piece of kit or you buy a solution from Siemens, it's going to work, and it's going to work into the long term. So that's all great stuff, but we are also do a lot of work with software, and the real where we can really get our teeth into it is the next phase whereby we use the software to connect all of our good hardware, get it into the cloud and then collect the data and use AI to analyze the data. And what that really and truly does is it enables our customers to increase their efficiency around resources or energy. So that's the that's the journey we're on now. We have always been we've always been good at engineering. We've always been good at innovating and putting time and effort into r, d, that's always been in our DNA. But the next phase, when you look forward, is the software piece to grow, the software part of Siemens and accelerate all of the good stuff that the hardware can do.

Dusty Rhodes 13:07
You mentioned AI. So let me ask you about that. Where is AI playing a part in your in your operations now, and where do you see it? Maybe in, I gotta say, 10 years just, just for the crack to put you under pressure.

Joe Walsh 13:20
Okay, great question. So where, where are we today, with AI? Well, my answer to that is really simple. We are all of us, whether it's Siemens or whether it's engineers or LinkedIn, it doesn't really matter. We are all surrounded by AI. Make no mistake about that. We all you utilise AI. So Aoi is everywhere. Where we see it in Siemens at the moment is we are using AI around the tools that we use. So, you know, we see these improvements coming all of the time. I'll give you a very good, tangible example of AI now in a moment, but to answer the next part of it, I mean, where is it going to be in 10 years? Well, I don't think anybody can really answer that, but what I can say is this, we're all going to be in a different place. And there is no question at all that everybody, everybody's role, or everybody's day-to-day, will be different, and AI will be behind the scenes making it different. There's absolutely, absolutely no question in my mind about that, exactly where that brings us to in 10 years time. Well, that's going to be fascinating to watch. And what I would say to you is, wherever that landing place is, you'll find Siemens right at the heart of it. And the reason I say that, and the reason I say that with confidence, there's no doubt in my mind, because just recently, Siemens have invested hugely on the software side. So we've just recently acquired a US software company called. Altar. And even more recently, the next acquisition was another company called dot Matrix. Now what these did, these are now acquired by Siemens. Can you believe that investment was 15 billion for both of them, 10 and five? And what that will really do is bring on. We, we already use digital twins, but it's going to bring digital twins to the next level. So we, as I say, we're already using digital twins. So I mean this, this is really and truly where we're going to get into resource efficiency, where, boy, you actually build your project. So imagine Ardnacrusha it in 1925 we in our headquarters and down on site. They still have a lot of the drawings and all done by hand and fantastic engineering work, fantastic. But if we were doing art in a crush it today, we would build it digitally, and we would, we would do that, and by doing it digitally, and digitally, we can utilise our skill sets all around Siemens, so it wouldn't be just a team in ornick. It could be anywhere. And you can bring in your customer, and you can do your testing, and then eventually hand over the digital twin, and you've made all the mistakes. This is where you make your mistakes. You make your mistakes digitally. You correct them, you test, you retest, you agree, that's it, and then you then you hand that to the builder who goes and builds it to that specification. So the acquisition of Altair and dogmatics, dogmatics is very focused on the life science industry. And life science is is an area that we we support a lot of companies in Ireland, but we kind of work behind the scenes. You wouldn't see or hear that much of us, but we're behind the scenes supporting those companies on their journey. But to give you a tangible, concrete example, and you started this discussion up talking about the fire industry. So here we go. So last year, we have had a relationship with the Irish prison service for many years, and what we've been doing with the prison service is providing life safety systems in 11 of the prisons in Ireland, and with the advance of technology, what we did with the prison service last year was we took eight of those 11 and we upgraded them such that we connected them to the cloud. So before we did that, our teams would go on the site, and they would manually test each sensor. Nothing wrong with that. But now what we're doing is we're increasing the frequency of testing because we're connected to the cloud. We're standardising the testing so every detector is tested exactly in the same way, so that's improving the performance. But, and this is where it gets really interesting, because of that application, when Ergo is or anybody goes into a prison, any contractor goes into a prison, they have to be escorted. Can't just walk into a prison and walk so by taking the testing to an entirely different platform. We've increased the quality of the testing, and we've reduced the Escort time. So that's real value. Back to the prison service, and now, because all of this stuff is being done in the cloud, all of the records, because records around for a safety are really important. But all of those records are now available in the cloud, and we can give those back to the customer in whatever format they want, so they can look at it a phone or a laptop or a PC or whatever they want, and it's all it's all in perfect condition, and it's there forever. So there, that's a very real, tangible example of the technology that we had, which is fantastic technology. No problems with the kit, with transforming it, with the use of the cloud and ao. And what will happen there is, you know, as AI develops, will be able to do more with that connection.

Dusty Rhodes 19:25
Yeah, and with all that consistent testing, the AI is able to monitor so many millions of data points like every second. But I'm quite sure that one day, instead of kind of going, Ah, we've discovered a problem. I need an engineer here to help me, the AI will go and I'll fix it myself.

Joe Walsh 19:44
Well, you think, to summarise it, what it does is it changes the routine from reactive to proactive, so the AI gets ahead and can see much. Much better than any human that, oh, there's something about that sensor I don't quite like, but it will get that way before any human intervention would so you so you're preventing problems as opposed to reacting to them.

Dusty Rhodes 20:15
Let me ask you, as the man at the top right, because Siemens do so many amazing things, but they're all different things. Okay, how do you with your team in Ireland foster a culture of of creativity and problem solving?

Joe Walsh 20:31
Oh, that's a good question. I would, I would, I'd answer that simply by saying that what we we work really hard. We work really hard to create a sense of belonging and ownership. And if we can do that, and people feel that they are part of the company. To give you an example, if you look at the global numbers, there's over 300,000 employees today, more than 50% of those own shares and Siemens. So that gives you a sense of ownership. Now, you may not be a big shareholder, but you own a part of Siemens. And if we then try and give everybody a self as a sense of belonging. What we're really trying to do is to bring every member of staff and get them to fulfill their potential. So I'm not quite answering the innovation piece of that. What I'm really saying to you is this is no different. We're no different to any industry or any sector. We are just some of our people. And if we can, if we can foster belonging and ownership, well then now, now we can start to think about innovation. And when we talk about innovation and Siemens, it's a great story. Again, I'll throw a figure at you. Last year we invested, when we we finished the last financial year, we invested over 5 billion in R D. That's the global figure, obviously. So innovation is in our DNA. A lot of that innovation, again, if you just think about my role Siemens in Ireland. So we are like a sales office and the interface with our customer, but behind the scenes, we have our headquarter, and this is one of the advantages that we have. So we have very long term relationships with our customer, and then we can bring in the innovation from the headquarters and the power of the headquarters. And when you do that, and you do that time and time and time again over the course of the last 100 years, what you find is innovation becomes part of what we do. So there's no simple answer to well, you know, we tell people to to go home and dream up new ideas. It's more of a culture, and it's built upon long term and and trying to keep our staff and keep them, keep them learning.

Dusty Rhodes 23:16
I was going to ask you that because, I mean, everything is evolving, and engineering is evolving, and it's at such a high level at the moment. How do you keep learning and staying ahead? I mean, how do you do that for the people working with you? How do you do it for yourself?

Joe Walsh 23:30
Yeah, it's not easy. It's a life is busy. Life is busy, and it's really a question of priorities. And I mean, the day job takes up a lot of time, and it takes up a lot of energy. So you know, you only have a certain resource left. But you know, when it comes to the learning to be fair, to be fair to Siemens, well, what we have done is we have created a suite of learning. So again, I have to put it back into the headquarters, because it's centralised and it's available to every member of staff. So I can go on to Siemens now, and I can type in AI, and a multiple of courses will pop up in front of me, and I can do them virtually, and I can do them at my own time and pace, and it doesn't really matter what you type in. I could I could put in business excellence. I could put in logistics or a COVID in HR, all of the all of the business categories are in there, and they're all available to every member of staff. But making it available is one thing. It's really to try and get the culture such that they have some time and space to actually do it, and that's, that's where the real trick is, because it's very much the pace the world is going at. It's not, it's not what you know today. It's more about how you learn. That's the real trick. And trying to, trying to give our staff to. Space to get the day job done and do some learning. And that's the real challenge.

Dusty Rhodes 25:07
Have you yourself worked on a project that didn't go to to plan, and what did you learn from it? I see that look, I've worked on loads of projects that they can go to plan. What's In My Head is you're talking about doing the courses. So it's great. You're learning academically about things that might happen. Then you're on a job, and you're learning things as you go along, because you're presented with problems, you're going, Oh God, what are we going to do here? And you figure it out. I'm trying to figure out the difference. To get an example from yourself about a project that wasn't going quite to plan. What did you learn from it?

Joe Walsh 25:42
It's a great question, and anybody in my position will tell you that. Excuse me, there are many projects that don't go the way you want them to go, whether that's, you know, cost, or whether that's delays or whatever resource, whatever there's, lots of different reasons. So what we do in Siemens is we have developed a means by which we deliver so we call it project management at Siemens. So we break the project into stages. So the four stages, let's say the sales stage, actually. So that's very much at the sales stage, and then you reach a point where that becomes an instruction from the customer. And now we hand over to our execution, and when we go through the execution, we install a whole series of quality dates. Now that doesn't guarantee that the project may not go wrong. I mean, there are so many stakeholders in a project, and you know, you you take any of the large projects, generally speaking, they're going to be led by the Civil company, the civil construction company, and then there'll be mechanical and electrical companies, and then there'll be all sorts of specialist companies, and there'll be all sorts of time pressures. So there are multiple stakeholders, and once you have multiple stakeholders, obviously the risk increases. So what we're trying to do is to get through it stage by stage and pass each quality gate. And we we have standardized that in Siemens, because we had lots of projects that didn't go right all around the world. And again, you know, whether it's a project not going right or or anything else, you will find that in Siemens there's very, very likely going to be many other people in other countries who have had the same problems. More importantly, had the same solutions. So there's always somebody to turn to, there's always somebody to get advice from. There's always somebody who has been in that situation. We have a term we use in Siemens. If Siemens knew what Siemens know, it's very simple. It really is very simple because we, we have, you know, somebody says, you know, what is experience? Well, experience is the sum of your mistakes. It's another way to say it, it's the sum of your mistakes. But the real trick is to learn from them and and to keep that learning continuous.

Dusty Rhodes 28:23
'If only Siemens knew what Siemens knows'. What about if only Joe Walsh knew what Joe Walsh actually knows? If you could go back to yourself in your mid 20s, what piece of career advice would you give yourself?

Joe Walsh 28:40
Oh, I know. I'm not sure that I have anything really profound.

Dusty Rhodes 28:44
No, it doesn't have to be anything profound, practical.

Joe Walsh 28:47
I would always be on the practical side. I said to you at the outset, some of the best learning I did was when I was in an apprentice, and at that time in that environment, you didn't really get much time or space. You're expected to be on time, you're expected to get it done. You're expected to have all your stuff and next, do it all again, and next and next. And you really didn't get a lot of space, which in itself, was a fantastic learning. So if I was to go back, I think what I'd be saying are might sound, might sound old fashioned now, but fundamentally, you know, get your keyed into it and bring, bring your whole self to it. And if you bring your whole self to it, and you work with good colleagues, things tend to tend things tend to work out. And of course there'll be problems, and of course there'll be difficulties. But when, when you encounter those difficulties, you really don't have many choices. You've got to step back and ask yourself, well, what is this problem? What are the options, though, do I have? And then take some some advice. So. Today, I have no difficulty telling you I have a very close working relationship with our CEO, CFO, and I speak to him. I could speak to him on a daily basis. I certainly speak to him every second day. And you know when, when you're doing that and you're picking up from other people who have different skill sets, generally speaking, generally speaking, to take the right options when you when you find your you have a hurdle to jump over. So to answer your question, Dorsey, I don't have anything profound to say, other than if you're going to get into a job or you're going to take on a task within a job, bring your whole self and and and apply yourself, and things generally work out and when they you know when, when you feel the pressure, because you will feel the pressure. Go and seek advice. Go and seek advice from colleagues who who understand you and get it and will will be able to give constructive advice. I've heard a lot of advice out there. I would think, Oh, not sure. I'm going to take that advice. So, so, you know, you need, you need to be, you need to be selective as to who, yeah, who you engage with. I'm very much

Dusty Rhodes 31:17
the same myself in that people ask me, you know, how do you do these things? And I would say, just take the first step. Is exactly what you say. It's just get stuck in. Just do something, and problems will occur. And as you say, you learn to figure them out. You learn to get advice from other people, and you learn from other people, and all that kind of stuff. And that's what makes the world interesting. I'm absolutely fascinated with you, Joe, because you've been in the industry for a while, but yet you're still really passionate and you're very supportive of people. What keeps you motivated?

Joe Walsh 31:51
I would say, to see there's, there's a series of answers to that, right? The reality of my story is I come from a humble background. My dad was a butcher, and unfortunately he lost his wife, my mother when we were very young, so he found himself with five kids, the eldest night. So that was a tough environment, but he had this fantastic attribute of being able to see the best in people. So that's always in the back of my mind. How can you bring out the best in somebody else? That's that's always there. And I look back that far to where did that come from? That's where it comes from. That's for me, that's where it comes from. And you know, how do you keep it fresh today. Well, I don't struggle with that actually. I mean, in the role that I'm doing, it's always busy, it's always on. And because of my nature, I think it suits me. I like it. I like it when it's on. I like to be proactive. I like to get my teeth into things and that garbage come relatively easy to me. I've never, I Well, I think it's fair to say I've never, you know, got out of bed and think, Oh, my God, I have to go to work today. That's, that's never been my modus operandi, my I've always got up early and go and see where it takes me. So I don't know it's, it's in my DNA. It's not something that I work on. It's not something that I'm I'm not looking in the mirror practicing, you know, it's just in my DNA, and I give it my best shot.

Dusty Rhodes 33:30
Would it be fair to say that you're a man who likes a challenge, finding a problem, fixing it, that kind of stuff. Is that what keeps you young?

Joe Walsh 33:38
I like to get my teeth into things, but I'm not trying. I'm not trying. I'm not trying to change the world. I mean, what I the way it would, the way it would respond to that is it's very rewarding when you get involved in a project. I'll give you an example, real life example. So I said to you at the outset, we're very proud that we have reached the centenary in Norman. We're very proud of that, and we're very proud of the role we've played to support government and industry. But in 2024 we had to start to think about the centenary. But what are we going to do about this? And we put together a small team, and we celebrated in January, and that small team was a Siemens team, and we set up a small working group with ESB, because ESB played such a huge role in Ardnacrusha and electrical in the nation, they were very much part of that story. And we also also in the working group, we had the Department of Energy. So when we finished it, it was very rewarding. It was very tough going now, but it was very rewarding. And the rewarding piece that for me was not that it was my gig. It wasn't my gig. It was a collective effort of a small team in Siemens and the team in ESB. And a team in the Department of Energy, and that's really what, what inspires me. It's not so much that I'm going to be a lone wolf, that that's that that doesn't do it for me. And I know that does for some people, but that's not really me. The the preparations for the centenary with those small teams, that's really and truly work. Those are for myself.

Dusty Rhodes 35:23
Well, listen, Joe, just over the last half hour or so, I've learned, I mean, a lot about engineering, which I was kind of expected to but you've told me so much about life and things that you say about, you know, career and working with other people, and the importance of looking after yourself at the same time as well. So many gems of wisdom in there. I can't thank you enough. If you'd like to find out more about Joe and some of the topics that we did have a chat about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of the podcast. But for now, Executive Director and General Manager Siemens Ireland limited Joe Walsh, thank you so much.

Joe Walsh 35:55
Thanks, Dusty. Thoroughly enjoyed that. Much obliged.

Dusty Rhodes 35:59
And if you enjoyed our podcast today, please do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for engineers Ireland AMPLIFIED in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland for advanced episodes and more information on career development opportunities, there are libraries of information the website at engineersireland.ie. Until next time, from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.